The Medical Council of India (MCI), the regulatory body that supervises medical education and ethics in India, has hauled up the Indian Medical Association (IMA), the body that represents private medical practitioners, for endorsing plain consumer products and earning a sizeable sum in the process. The particular instance, according to a news report, of IMA’s endorsement — two products of PepsiCo, Tropicana fruit juice and Quaker Oats, for Rs 2.25 crore — is not the first. In the past IMA has endorsed a range of brands like Dettol, Lizol and Pampers. Why a doctors’ association should endorse consumer brands when doctors themselves cannot do so, particularly when no proper study has been undertaken to determine the efficacy or quality of those brands vis-à-vis their competitors, is beyond comprehension. Doctors the world over, and particularly in India where literacy levels are low, command implicit faith among the masses as a source of informed advice on treatment of ailments and health in general. It is a matter of common sense that it should be unethical for such people or the association that represents them to sell their opinion for a fee.
The answer to why this sort of thing has been allowed to go on for so long may lie in the health of the watchdog itself. Earlier this year, the then president of MCI, Ketan Desai, was arrested under sensational circumstances while purportedly accepting a hefty bribe to smoothen the recognition of a medical institution. An interim body of eminent doctors has since then run the affairs of MCI and it is the decision of this body to haul up IMA for its endorsements. The response of IMA has been quite predictable. According to the report, it has argued that it has not endorsed the products but only entered into an agreement with the firm in question to partner in a nutritional awareness programme. As was to be expected, the earlier MCI did not go after the endorsement. It was a member of the IMA’s own central committee who first moved MCI in the matter and the National Human Rights Commission also got into the act by serving a notice on the association. The latest MCI move comes after its own determination that IMA falls under its jurisdiction. MCI should put an end to this blatantly unethical practice. But action should not stop here. The earlier decision of MCI to ban gift-taking by doctors and lay down the punishment for such transgression lost some of its moral clout when the head of the watchdog itself was found to be a major offender. MCI has now to take forward its agenda so that not only is its credibility reinstated but a strict regulatory regime to enforce medical ethics is put in place.