Tweeting Doctors: Conflict of Interest?

(Originally aired Feb. 27, 2017) Guest: Vinay Prasad, MD, Professor of Medicine, Oregon Health and Science University Does your doctor Tweet? That’s maybe a strange question, but more and more doctors are using social media, including our next guest Vinay Prasad, who is a cancer doctor. A few years ago, he began to notice other cancer doctors tweeting about various drugs and clinical trials, and he started to wonder if they were being paid by drug companies to post that information. We’ve all seen celebrities, pro-athletes and popular bloggers promoting products from sponsors on their social media accounts. Has that kind of advertising taken root in medicine, now, too?