The full text of all Healthy Skepticism International News issues since January 2001 are available from this page. The first international issue was published in November 1983.

International News issues published before January 2001. 

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Home: www.healthyskepticism.org 

July 2004 Vol 22 No 7

Melissa Raven
Direct-to-consumer advertising: Healthy education or corporate spin?

June 2004 Vol 22 No 6

Peter Mansfield in correspondence with Medicine Australia

Possible illegal promotion of Cialis at http://www.erectionproblems.com.au website

 

May 2004 Vol 22 No 5

Kris Weerasuriya

Launching of Bristol-Myers Squibb agency in Sri Lanka

 

April 2004 Vol 22 No 4
Joel Lexchin
A review of recent studies of prescribing by Canadian physicians

January - March 2004 Vol 22 No 1-3
Joanna Moncrieff
Is Psychiatry for sale?
An examination of the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on academic and practical psychiatry.

December 2003 Vol 21 No 12
Our beginning
This months issue continues the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of Healthy Skepticism (formerly MaLAM) by reproducing some of our earliest documents.

November 2003 Vol 21 No 11
Celebrations!
We celebrate with photos of our 20th anniversary, the AdWatch Launch and the presentation of a Flinders University Convocation Medal to Healthy Skepticism founder Peter Mansfield.

October 2003 Vol 21 No 10
Garai's challenge: The 40th anniversary of the inspiration for Healthy Skepticism
We reproduce a great speech from an advertising executive.

September 2003 Vol 21 No 9
Shabnam Minwalla
Drug promotion in India
We reproduce three reports from the Times of India on a meeting to discuss the findings of a qualitative study of "Promotional Practices of Pharmaceutical Firms in India" by the Forum for Medical Ethics in collaboration with the Drug Controlled General of India and funded by WHO India. 

August 2003 Vol 21 No 8
Peter R Mansfield
Feedback about the AdWatch prototype
We received feedback from 57 subscribers and 2 staff of AstraZeneca on our prototype AdWatch on Nexium (esomeprazole).

July 2003 Vol 21 No 7
Peter R Mansfield
Improving the Medicines Australia Code
The Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC) is proposing to reauthorise the Medicines Australia (MA) Code of Conduct for pharmaceutical promotion. 

June 2003 Vol 21 No 6
AdWatch team
AdWatch Prototype: Nexium (esomeprazole)
We invite subscribers to comment on our prototype for a new newsletter: AdWatch. AdWatch explains the illogical, psychological and pharmacological tricks used in drug advertisements. AdWatch provides practical recommendations and opportunities for feedback to the AdWatch team and the company responsible for the advertisement.

May 2003 Vol 21 No 5
Portal to BMJ Special issue on Doctors and the Drug industry
We invite subscribers to read and write rapid responses to articles in the 31 May 2003 edition of the British Medical Journal using our portal to the many articles that at relevant to Healthy Skepticism.

April 2003 Vol 21 No 4
Rosie Burn, Peter R Mansfield
Healthy Skepticism 2003 Subscriber Survey: Report Part B
This is the second of a two part report on our January 2003 subscriber survey. The aim of the survey is to help inform our future planning.

March 2003 Vol 21 No 3
Peter R Mansfield
Action on prescription drug promotion to the public
We invite you to help a campaign to get drug advertising to the public banned in New Zealand

February 2003 Vol 21 No 2
Rosie Burn, Peter R Mansfield
Healthy Skepticism 2003 Subscriber Survey: Report Part A
The aim of this survey was to better understand our current supporters, to help us to gain support for our new activities and to help inform our future planning.

January 2003 Vol 21 No 1
Christophe Desmet. 
Pharmaceutical firms' generosity and physicians: Legal aspects in Belgium. 
This edition is based on a paper given at the 14th World Congress on Medical Law in Maastricht during 11-15 August 2002. At the time Christophe Desmet was affiliated with the Centre for Biomedical Ethics and Law of the Catholic University of Louvain as a Research Assistant of the Fund for Scientific Research – Flanders.

We invite you to comment on this edition in the box after the conclusions section.

December 2002 Vol 20 No 12
Peter R Mansfield. 
Does teaching evaluation of drug promotion improve the quality and economy of prescribing? This edition is a research proposal written for a PhD scholarship application.  The application has won an Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Public Health Postgraduate Research Scholarship. The PhD is a key part of Healthy Skepticism Inc's plans for implementing our research and education objectives during 2003-6. 

November 2002 Vol 20 No 11
Michael Wirth, Daniel Scherer. 
Patient's perceptions of doctors' relationships with pharmaceutical companies.  This edition is the report of a survey done by two 3rd year medical students for their research elective under the supervision of Healthy Skepticism Inc Member Dr Jon Jureidini.  The survey focused on beliefs about gifts from drug companies. The findings include: 1) few doctors are happy about the idea of having their patients' attention drawn to this issue and 2) patients rarely express negative views about doctors' ethics whilst sitting in their doctor's waiting room.

August - October 2002 Vol 20 No 8-10
Lynda Caudle. 
These 3 editions have been merged to present a psychology honours thesis titled:
AN UNHEALTHY ALLIANCE: A discourse analytic study of General Practitioners and Pharmaceutical Representatives, Gifts and Samples.  Peter Mansfield and Melissa Raven helped with design and data collection for the research but did not participate in the analysis.

July 2002 Vol 20 No 7
Jon Jureidini and Peter R Mansfield. 
Does drug promotion adversely influence doctors' abilities to make the best decisions for patients?
Patients may benefit if individual psychiatrists, and the profession as a whole, develop more healthy scepticism about the harm to benefit ratios of relationships with the pharmaceutical industry.
Reproduced with permission from Australasian Psychiatry www.ranzcp.org/ap.htm 

June 2002 Vol 20 No 6
Juan Gérvas and Mercedes Pérez-Fernández. 
Cerivastatin and fatal rhabdomyolysis: not just a safety issue.  
This edition explains concisely why the withdrawal of cerivastatin should prompt a reconsideration of the whole process of drug approval, marketing and use, especially reconsideration of the reliance on surrogate endpoints.
This edition is also available in Spanish.  Pulse aquí para ver la versión en español.

May 2002 Vol 20 No 5
Peter R Mansfield and Melissa Raven.  
Antibacterial advertising: Encouraging healthy scepticism among doctors.
This edition provides an analysis of the opinions of the 163 New Zealand doctors who responded to a request for feedback for a Healthy Scepticism New Zealand newsletter regarding antimicrobial drug promotion.  Only 3% of those who were sent the newsletter responded so the opinions of the respondents can not be generalised to the non-respondents.  
This report was submitted for publication to the New Zealand Family Physician who rejected it twice and described it as "worthless".  By contrast, we believe that the opinions of any single doctor on any significant issue are important regardless of whether or not those opinions can be used to predict the opinions of others. When no better information is available, suppression of publication of opinions, because they may not be representative, misses an opportunity for the advancement of science.  We invite readers to decide for themselves. We also note the concern expressed by one of the New Zealand Family Physician reviewers that publication of this report could lead to "an adverse backlash" from their advertisers.

March/April 2002 Vol 20 No 3/4
Report from the Dutch Health Inspectorate: 
Marketing plans for medicinal products available on prescription only: the current situation. The Hague, July 2001, second revised edition
Instead of a Healthy Skepticism edition for March/April we have reproduced an impressive report from the Netherlands about 28 normally secret marketing plans that were "obtained as part of enforcement activities during visits to pharmaceutical companies". One of the most interesting parts of the report is the section on Phase IV studies (studies after the registration of a medicinal product, sometimes known as seeding trials) The marketing plans mentioned influencing prescriptions for the product being promoted and building up relationships with the doctors as an objective for 48 of the 71 Phase IV studies (68%). No objective were stated for the remaining studies. On average these studies cost 20% of these very expensive marketing budgets. We thank Mrs. J.S. van Egmond-Vettenburg and Mr H. ter Steege for writing the report and the latter (who is now the Inspector of Health in the Netherlands) for giving us permission to reproduce it.

January/February 2002  Vol 20  No 1/2
Peter R Mansfield. 
Background for a research proposal
This edition provides an introduction for some research that we are hoping to do to find out if teaching critical appraisal of promotion is a cost effective way to improve the quality and economy of prescribing.

November/December 2001  Vol 19  No 11/12   
Peter R Mansfield. 
Healthy Scepticism about promotion of asthma drugs in New Zealand.
We have examined 8 claims for 6 drugs for asthma in the medical tabloids New Zealand Doctor and New Zealand GP during 1999 - 2000.  We believe that in every case the claims are misleading because of failure to disclose problems.  The promotional techniques used included: Hanging comparators, Exaggeration, Personal data collection, Flawed studies, Social proof, “New”. “Free” and Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

September/October 2001  Vol 19  No 9/10   
Peter R Mansfield. 
We can win against DTCA.
In this edition Peter Mansfield tells the story of how he became involved in working on the Direct To Consumer Advertising of Prescription Only Medicines (DTCA) issue and provides four key points that have been proven useful for persuading key decision-makers against DTCA.

July/August 2001  Vol 19  No 7/8  
Peter Mansfield and Paul Glasziou. 
Hormone Replacement Therapy HTML. - Acrobat pdf version 
This edition provides our subscribers with a copy of the feedback written for Australian general practitioners who participated in a case study based educational exercise about "Hormone Replacement Therapy" commissioned by the Australian National Prescribing Service. 

January/June 2001  Vol 19  No 1/6  
Peter Mansfield and Joel Lexchin.  
Scepticism and beliefs about new drugs. 
This edition provides our subscribers with a copy of the feedback written for Australian general practitioners who participated in a case study based educational exercise about "new drugs" commissioned by the Australian National Prescribing Service. 

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