Healthy Skepticism Library item: 10737

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: news

Drug ruling should have gone further
The Age (Melbourne) 2007 Jun 29
http://www.theage.com.au/news/editorial/drug-ruling-should-have-gone-further/2007/06/28/1182624074565.html

Full text:

LAST year The Age published a major series that examined the relationship between the medical profession and pharmaceutical companies. The articles showed that the nexus between the two was linked and sometimes hidden to such an extent that it called into question the independence of medical practitioners in prescribing medicines to patients.

On Wednesday the gravy train of inducements driven by the drug companies was ordered to slow down. The Australian Competition Tribunal ruled that drug companies had to reveal the hospitality that they lavished upon doctors and nurses. The companies will have to disclose the venues, the number of professionals invited to an event, and the costs of food, drink, travel, accommodation and travel they expended on them.

The tribunal warned that without disclosure there was a danger of “inappropriate benefits” being offered. The independence of health professionals to prescribe medicine had to be free from the perception that a decision was influenced by a pharmaceutical company offering gifts.

While the ruling is a welcome step in disclosure it stops short of requiring the naming of the people to whom the companies have turned their attention. This is a pity. Patients deserve to know the circumstances under which they are being prescribed a certain make of drug. Naming the recipients of drug company largesse not only lets the public know who has received it, but who has not.

Medicines Australia, the pharmaceutical industry group, believes the ruling will add no public benefit to the industry’s own code of conduct. The patient, however, has the right to expect that every decision made in regard to his or her health is free of outside influence. This ruling helps advance that right, but should have gone further.