Healthy Skepticism Library item: 12501

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

Fernandez-Llimos F, Vazquez Gomez I.
Information provided by generic and brand-name pharmaceutical manufacturers in response to a request.
Pharm World Sci 2007 Dec; 29:(6):683-7
http://www.springerlink.com/content/r74x189243174673/

Abstract:

AIM: To assess the medical information provided by manufacturers in response to a specific request, and to compare the responses between generic and brand-name companies. SETTING: Community pharmacy in Spain. METHOD: A systematic request for product monographs was made between 1999 and 2002 to manufacturers registering new medicines in Spain. A standardised letter was sent to the medical affairs departments. If there was no reply after 3 months, a second standardised letter was sent requesting the monograph. Blood derivatives, intravenous medicines, and radiological contrast agents were excluded. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The delay that occurred in receiving information and the type of material sent in response to the request was compared between the two types of companies. RESULTS: About of 833 medicines from 185 manufacturers were registered during the time period studied. After applying exclusion criteria, 805 medicines, including 419 (52.0%) generic and 386 (48.0%) brand-name products, were analyzed. No replies were received for 242 (30.0%) requests 183 (43.7%) generics and 59 (15.3%) brand-names; P < 0.005). We received 369 (65.5% of 533) replies after the first request: 140 of 236 (59.3%) generics and 229 of 327 (70.0%) brand-names (P = 0.009). The average response delay was 9.7 days [CI95%: 8.65-10.68]. There was a statistically significant difference between generic and brand-name companies after the first request (P = 0.001), but not after the second request (P = 0.312). CONCLUSION: Brand-name manufacturers reply more often, more quickly, and with better quality information than generic manufacturers.

Keywords:
Community Pharmacy Services Drug Industry* Drug Information Services* Drugs, Generic* Patents as Topic*

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Far too large a section of the treatment of disease is to-day controlled by the big manufacturing pharmacists, who have enslaved us in a plausible pseudo-science...
The blind faith which some men have in medicines illustrates too often the greatest of all human capacities - the capacity for self deception...
Some one will say, Is this all your science has to tell us? Is this the outcome of decades of good clinical work, of patient study of the disease, of anxious trial in such good faith of so many drugs? Give us back the childlike trust of the fathers in antimony and in the lancet rather than this cold nihilism. Not at all! Let us accept the truth, however unpleasant it may be, and with the death rate staring us in the face, let us not be deceived with vain fancies...
we need a stern, iconoclastic spirit which leads, not to nihilism, but to an active skepticism - not the passive skepticism, born of despair, but the active skepticism born of a knowledge that recognizes its limitations and knows full well that only in this attitude of mind can true progress be made.
- William Osler 1909