Sharing knowledge

I found the Indian Journal of Plastic Surgery while searching for articles on surgical treatment of platysma contracture. As a former subscriber to the Journal of Plastic & Reconstructive surgery, which cost me over $500/yr, I found the following editorial especially significant:
Thatte M. On ethics and information. Indian J Plast Surg [serial online] 2007 [cited 2008 Jul 7];40:1. Available from: http://www.ijps.org/text.asp?2007/40/1/1/32652
Here is an excerpt:

"I would imagine most authors want as many peers as possible to read about their work, that is why they publish it in the first place. Fortunately, in medicine we do not enforce IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) in surgical innovations or else you would pay a fee every time you did someone's procedure. This is not true of journals. Access here is guarded jealously with fees to be paid for every paper you want to read as full text after say an online search. The argument being that unless someone paid, the whole edifice of publisher, search engine and so on was not feasible. The emergence of new strategies in the IT world, where advertising makes most applications free to the end user should give us an insight into new revenue models. If these end up allowing free access to knowledge albeit in exchange for seeing ads on the way, it will still be a huge boost to the thousands of doctors in developing countries who would otherwise never access that information. At the end of the day 'information is power' and we need to enhance free flow of information to colleagues around the world."

The current issue includes an article titled "Mycobacterium fortuitum abdominal wall abscesses following liposuction" As I began reading this paper I was astonished to find the name of the hospital openly revealed. You would never find this kind of transparency in any American publication. In our "advanced" society, this would be fodder for litigation.

Whose interest is served by keeping such information from the public? Evidently, in India, they seem to be serving the most important entity in the larger scheme of medicine: Patients. Sharing of research and information is encouraged, which is a far cry from the the way we do things here, where money is the constant undercurrent of every aspect of medicine.
India is setting an example for the world of medicine in ways we, in this country, are too selfish to understand will soon have to be the only way if the whole of humanity is to benefit.