Physician bribes in the US and China

This article discusses the issues related to proprietary organizations such as pharmaceutical companies providing payments to physicians to influence their prescribing of the company’s products. Such payments, or bribes, may not be associated with an explicit agreement to prescribe the products or it may be a quid pro quo agreement to do so. The recent finding that employees of the British-based company Glaxo SmithKline (GSK) provided funds to physicians in China to influence their prescribing has made this a topic of concern in China as well as in many other countries.