That's the sellout price for a spine surgeon. Give or take a few million.

Like police officers, whose thin blue line separates them from “the other,” medical researchers and doctors are loath to diss their fellow professionals. But this week, the code of omerta was breached with a series of critical reports in The Spine Journal about industry-sponsored research in general and the use of a bone growth product in particular.

As noted in the New York Times, “It is extremely rare for researchers to publicly chastise colleagues, and editors of leading medical journals said they could not recall an instance in which a publication had dedicated an entire issue for such a singular purpose.”