Almost all physicians, nurses, and pharmacists in the U.S. have to partake in continuing medical education (CME) to stay up-to-date on their practice. It’s no surprise that this workforce, already drenched in student loan debt, will take up free education when possible

Most free continued education is funded by pharmaceutical companies to some capacity. If this strikes you as potentially unethical, you’re not alone.

In niche-interest discussion groups and online forums, this fact is often weaponized as a critique of the pharmaceutical industry. The excited plaintiff’s logic is clear — pharmaceutical marketing incentives shouldn’t play a role in a medical professional’s judgement.

You’d be hard pressed to find someone who would disagree with that argument. A psychiatrist should be making diagnoses based purely on what the literature deems as best fit for a patient’s ailment, not best fit for a company’s profit.

However, like many issues pinned on big pharma, dubious prescribing of medicine is not solely the industry’s fault. It’s the individual stakeholders at play.

Medical professionals and educators are no question some of the brightest and bravest workers in our country. That being said, they are still a product of our country, our capitalist economy, and our values.

CMEs are influenced by for-profit industry because the essence of our nation is for-profit industry. If not for commercial sponsors, who would foot the bill? Our costly education system has already compromised the medical service population’s wallets.

If not for pharmaceutical companies, who would help fund medical journals? Who would purchase the reprints?

This is not to say that we shouldn’t critique big pharma. Recent litigation surrounding pharmaceutical companies’ role in the opioid crisis illustrates the sheer amount of power they wield.

But in a country where for-profit sponsorship keeps the ship afloat, must we constantly point our fingers at the sponsor? The real conversation ought to be how can we train our medical teams, who’ve demonstrated their remarkable ability to adapt to new information, to be well versed in evaluating persuasive messages. How can we teach our scholars to detect sales pitches? What alternatives can we come up with for continued education funding?

I’d absolutely love to live in a world where both education and healthcare are funded by one another. But as we fight for that structural change, how might we take steps toward unadulterated, industry-free medical literature? How might our graduate students bring about new, non-corporate pharmacological data?

Regulation of our most powerful industries is ideal, but while many of those decisions are out-of-reach, the common person’s effort is a tool waiting to be utilized.