Healthy Skepticism Library item: 11888

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

Call to name doctors over bribes
Associated Press 2007 Oct 31
http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/Call-to-name-doctors-over-bribes/2007/10/31/1193618951564.html

Full text:

Australian doctors should be publicly named and even charged if they accept fancy dinners and other “bribes” from drug companies, an outspoken campaigner says.

Writer and pharmaceutical critic Ray Moynihan has used the Consumers International congress in Sydney to call for strengthening of new regulations imposed on industry to end “poisonous and potentially deadly” drug promotion.

But a powerful global industry representative present at the meeting has dismissed his calls as “extreme” and said industry self-regulation was better than government intervention.

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.

The number of doctors attending sponsored events and full costs incurred must now be declared on a website.

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?”

Global industry representative Dr Harvey Bale, head of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA), acknowledged that heavy over-promotion of drugs could be concerning and needed to be addressed.

But legislating against it was going “far, far too far”.

“Criminalisation would mean what? The doctors? The industry?” Dr Bale said.

“To criminalise health issues seems to be way out of proportion.”

He said Australia, along with the UK and Canada, had a more regulated approach to drug promotion, an approach not generally favoured by industry.

“In general, it’s better to rely on industry self-regulation than national regulation,” Dr Bale told AAP.

“If there’s something that is not adequately covered by the industry that’s where national regulation has a role, but to put it up front with regard to promotion of products can be risky.

“You’ve got to be careful not to kill the goose that lays the golden egg.”

The debate 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.