Healthy Skepticism Library item: 13410

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

Ryan S.
Psychiatrists back sponsorship deals
The Australian 2008 Apr 1
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23463973-23289,00.html

Full text:

A SENIOR member of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists resigned as convenor of its 2009 congress after his peers unanimously voted down a proposal to dump drug company sponsorship.

The college was forced last week to appoint two co-convenors to replace Malcolm Battersby, a fellow of the college.

RANZCP president Ken Kirkby said yesterday the college’s more than 20 councillors were not given enough reason tochange a policy that complied with the pharmaceutical industry’s code of conduct on sponsorships.

“They all felt the proposal lacked substance and wasn’t a suitable way to go,” he said.

“It hadn’t gone through the correct college processes. It was the view of the individuals rather than the college itself.’

That policy allows drug companies to bid against other potential sponsors for naming and signage rights at the event, to be held in Adelaide next year.

The clash highlights the debate about the scale and implications of the industry’s influence over doctors, whose prescribing patterns affect not only patient care but the viability of taxpayer-funded schemes subsidising drugs.

In the second half of last year, 42 drug companies spent a total of $31 million paying for “educational events” for health professionals – mostly doctors.

This year’s RANZCP congress at the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre in Melbourne has awarded its gold sponsorships to drug companies AstraZeneca, Lilly and Pfizer. Their products range from Prozac ando Zoloft for depression and Strattera for ADHD to Seroquel, Zyprexa and Zeldox for schizophrenia and bipolar disorders.

AstraZeneca and Pfizer are among the companies due to face this month a code of conduct committee hearing of Medicines Australia, the peak drug industry body, over potential ethical breaches in the educational activities offered to doctors.

Dr Battersby, who handed in his resignation as congress convenor last week, said the entire nine-member congress committee had supported a ban.

He said they were happy to accept the industry as exhibitors at the event, but believed it had to remain in its “rightful place”.

“It’s a much much stronger form of promotion and blurring of the boundaries between psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies if they become the formal sponsors of a meeting or a congress,” Dr Battersby said.

He said doctors were sometimes unwittingly influenced by the industry.