Academic medicine: who is it for?

Editor—The medical profession and society are at loggerheads because they mistrust each other as a result of increasing adverse effects from the concepts, drugs, and amenities advocated and promoted by business oriented biotechnologies and industry; these promotions have been blindly used and accepted by the serving profession for various reasons, including financial gains. This has led to the BMJ's long overdue campaign to promote academic medicine.¹ It needs the participation of honest and knowledgeable people to regain trust.

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The general media have a significant role. Now degraded moral values that have led to an unhealthy link between business and the serving profession to convert laboratory results into clinical utility have legal implications. This has happened at the cost of academic medicine and its advocates because of the serving profession, society, and governments the world over.² Developments are few but are highly glorified, resulting in many rude shocks, and they have alerted even the serving profession to realise the need to understand and participate in the development of a subject in order to be competent and competitive in an alert and demanding society.

Many participate in academic medicine as a means for future dependable clinical research, as indicated by the Association of American Medical Colleges. The benefits are enormous. This is echoed in the theme issue on academic medicine.³,⁴ High tech oriented remedies cannot provide the needed benefits to society even at referral hospitals in the best developed and financed countries, thus making them search for simpler clinically tried and dependable remedies to be provided at primary healthcare centres.⁵

In addition to all the above, academic medicine will enable the profession to regain its lost moral values and dignity. It will pave the way for society to not only depend on the profession but also not demand from it alone.