Healthy Skepticism Library item: 10148

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Journal Article

Mintzes B.
Pfizer conducts survey of French patients on information provided by industry
BMJ 2007 May 19; 334:(7602):1027
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/334/7602/1027-g

Abstract:

Pfizer’s French headquarters is surveying groups of patients in France on whether legal restrictions in Europe on the types of information that drug companies can provide to patients should be lifted.

Some health experts see the survey as part of a push by the drug industry to allow direct advertising of drugs to European consumers.

The six question survey, which has been criticised for being biased, begins by asking whether patients believe that health information “can be distributed only by public institutions” and goes on to ask whether the law prohibiting companies from mentioning the name and the characteristics of drugs in advertising to the public “should evolve.” A final question asks their opinion of the European Commission’s model brochure giving information on diabetes, an initiative that had industry involvement.

Sylvie Cukier, director of patient relations at Pfizer France, explained that the questionnaire was needed to provide some context for . . .