Healthy Skepticism Library item: 13298
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
Dunlevy S.
Doctors defy ban on drug gifts
The Daily Telegraph (Sydney) 2008 Mar 26
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23432249-5001021,00.html
Full text:
A DRUG company organised a luxury Mediterranean cruise for 300 doctors and pharmacists that included gambling, Greek dancing and a talk by former Australian Test captain Mark Taylor.
Sigma Pharmaceuticals, which manufactures Chemists Own and Herron products and supplies Amcal and Guardian pharmacies, paid for the speakers at the conference, held on the six-star luxury liner the Seven Seas Navigator in October last year.
Although pharmacists and doctors paid $8490 towards the cost of the 11-day cruise, they saved $3000 off the price.
The cruise appears to be in conflict with several provisions of a medicines industry code of conduct, policed by industry group Medicines Australia.
The code says “any hospitality offered by companies to healthcare professionals must be secondary to the educational content”.
The case highlights a major weakness with the code: Sigma Pharmaceuticals is not bound by it because the company is not a Medicines Australia member.
Other major generic drug companies also escape the code and its sanctions because the code only applies to Medicine Australia members.
Medicines Australia chief Ian Chalmers said yesterday his organisation was of the view “that all companies marketing prescription medicines should be required to abide by the Medicines Australia Code of Conduct”.
Sigma Australia chief Elmo de Alwis told The Daily Telegraph yesterday the conference would have cost Sigma “$20,000 at most”.
But he said doctors and pharmacists attending were able to save around $3000 off the price of the cruise because Sigma got bulk rates from the shipping company and the airlines.
He denies the company used the cruise as an opportunity to advertise itself and its products.
“We didn’t flog products. If you did that it would create more of a negative than a positive for you,” he said.
Sigma also runs a reward scheme for pharmacists enabling them to earn points to use to buy big screen TVs, golf clubs, wine and other products.
It also provides financing to pharmacists, which they can use to buy or upgrade their shops.
A report in Pharmacy News said doctors and pharmacists mixed “business and pleasure” on the cruise.
“After a sunset pool-side cocktail party as the ship sailed from the Athens port of Piraeus, a night of partying and some heavy losses on the blackjack table followed,” the report said.
It said Pharmacy Guild president Kos Sclavos and Sigma CEO Elmo de Alwis hosted a “big fat Greek barbecue which featured some enthusiastic, albeit shambolic, Greek dancing”.
Medicines Australia will release its first-ever comprehensive report on major drug companies’ entertainment expenditure on doctors and health professionals on Friday.
