Healthy Skepticism Library item: 15008

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

Kmietowicz Z.
Individual drug firms should stop paying for medical education
BMJ. 2009 Feb 4; 338:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/338/feb04_1/b442

Abstract:

All educational links between individual drug companies and the medical profession should cease, says a report from the Royal College of Physicians. Gifts to doctors and medical students, including food and travel, should also stop “in the spirit of a more balanced and mutually respectful partnership,” it says.

The report, which has been produced by a specially convened multisector working party, has examined the relationships between doctors, patients, the NHS, and the industry. Its aim is “to rewrite the contract between patient care and industry in the UK in order to improve national health outcomes,” said Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet, who chaired the working party and was author of the report.

The report says that patients have lost confidence in the prescribing process because of unequal access to drugs in the United Kingdom and the withholding of information about innovative drugs that could be available to them.