Healthy Skepticism Library item: 11877

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

McLean T.
Name and shame 'bribed' doctors
Herald Sun (Melbourne) 2007 Oct 31
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22679124-5005961,00.html

Full text:

AUSTRALIAN doctors should be publicly named and even charged if they accept fancy dinners and other “bribes” from drug companies, an international congress has been told.

Outspoken NSW academic and writer Ray Moynihan has used the Consumers International Congress in Sydney to call for new rules imposed on pharmaceutical companies to go further to put an end to “poisonous and potentially deadly” drug promotion.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has introduced tougher new rules forcing pharmaceutical companies to declare all gifts to medical practitioners, which can include overseas trips and expensive meals.

Mr Moynihan, from the University of Newcastle, told the gathering of global consumer and corporate representatives that the competition watchdog had made a “very good start” at limiting the influence of drug makers on those who prescribe their products.

“Events like wining and dining now have to be revealed but what we don’t know is the names of the doctors attending these events, and that’s one of the next steps,” he told delegates.

“There’s no reason that patients shouldn’t get access to all that information about their doctors.”

The following step must be to criminalise those “bribes”, said Mr Moynihan, author of Selling Sickness, a book heavily critical of the drug industry.

“I don’t know whether judges can take bribes, they’re presumably not allowed to,” he joked. “Why are doctors allowed to take bribes?”

His comments came as Consumers International released a hard-hitting report revealing lists of dinners, trips and gifts from mousepads to motorbikes bestowed on doctors overseas.

In one example, a Malaysian GP received more than 70 gifts from several companies in just one month.

Industry representative Dr Harvey Bale, head of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers, said many of the activities listed in the report were in breach of the federation’s own code of ethics.

He told delegates he accepted that heavy over-promotion of drugs could be concerning and needed to be addressed.

“To be a member of my federation a company must have an ethical drug promotion scheme,” Dr Bale said.

“But how that’s carried out … is not by any means perfect…”