Healthy Skepticism Library item: 13212

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

Goldstein J.
Feds Mull Funding Drug Pitches to Counter Big Pharma
The Wall Street Journal 2008 Mar 12
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/03/12/feds-mull-funding-drug-pitches-to-counter-big-pharma/?mod=googlenews_wsj

Full text:

A strategy used here and there to counter marketing by drug-industry sales reps could go big time if some federal lawmakers have their way. A influential senator wants to fund a nationwide launch of the strategy, which gives docs sales-rep-style presentations in their offices to present a balanced view of the risks and benefits of both new, expensive drugs and old, cheap ones.

Senator Herb Kohl, a Wisconsin Democrat, argues that the strategy, known as “counter detailing” or “academic detailing,” would ultimately save money by persuading doctors to prescribe more of the cheap drugs and fewer of the expensive ones. “As the single largest purchaser of prescription drugs in the country, the federal government can’t afford to pass up the opportunity to expand academic detailing nationwide,” Kohl told the Associated Press.

A drug industry group told the AP it doesn’t oppose the measure, but questioned whether the government ought to get involved. “The First Amendment provides everyone with a right to speak, including Uncle Sam,” said John Kamp, director of the Coalition for Healthcare Communication. “But I question whether the federal government needs to be in the business of countering pharmaceutical sales.”

To bolster his case, Kohl’s hosting a hearing in Washington today with some of the folks who’ve been counter-detailing for a while. A Kaiser Permanente official will describe how the health system’s internal education program led Kaiser docs a few years back to prescribe Cox-2 inhibitors such as Merck’s Vioxx at a far lower level than docs nationwide – a trend that likely saved both money and lives. (Vioxx was pulled off the market because it raised the risk of serious cardiovascular problems.)

Jerry Avorn, a Harvard doc who has been a long-time promoter and practitioner of academic detailing, will explain that it “is not a ‘Just Say No To Drugs’ program,” According to his prepared testimony. “It begins with the assumptions that prescribing is one of the most useful and challenging things we doctors do, and that we doctors crave accessible, unbiased data about the drugs we prescribe. If war is too important to be left to the generals, then drug information is too important to be left primarily to the pharmaceutical industry.”