corner
Healthy Skepticism
Join us to help reduce harm from misleading health information.
Increase font size   Decrease font size   Print-friendly view   Print
Register Log in

Healthy Skepticism Library item: 17337

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: Media Release

Attorney General Urges Disclosure And Limitations On Drug Company Gifts To Doctors
Office of the Attorney General 2010 Mar 1
http://www.ct.gov/ag/cwp/view.asp?Q=456322&A=3869


Full text:

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal today urged legislation requiring strict limitations and strong disclosure of pharmaceutical drug company gifts to doctors that may improperly influence health care decisions.

Blumenthal — who has handled several major investigations and settlements involving drug company influence over doctors — testified on the legislation today with Connecticut Center for Patient Safety Executive Director Jean Rexford and others familiar with drug company sales policies. Pharmaceutical drug companies spend billions of dollars — some estimates include $23 billion annually of which $7 billion is spend on ‘direct-to-physicians’ marketing — to market prescription drugs. “This proposal recognizes that health care providers and pharmaceutical companies should interact and exchange ideas and experiences — but in the sunshine of transparency and disclosure,” Blumenthal said. “Addicted to profits, pharmaceutical drug companies focus relentlessly on practitioners, seeking enhanced sales and profits. “While certain pharmaceutical drug companies may be taking steps toward self-reform, we cannot rely solely on such efforts to break an industry attraction — some might say addiction — to such practices. A state law readily enforceable by our state agencies would protect the physician-patient relationship from drug company influence. Rexford said, “This bill provides simple solutions that will help the health care consumer. Transparency and accountability are key components of this legislation.” Specifically, the legislation would include:

· requirements that pharmaceutical and medical device companies adopt a code of conduct — and training and monitoring to ensure compliance with the code;
· Annually report all authorized payments or other economic benefits provided to health care providers that are individually in excess of $50; and
· Prohibitions against direct payments or other compensation by pharmaceutical companies to health care providers, unless in exchange for a bona fide service.

The legislation prohibits most of the egregious gifts and forms of compensation while allowing drug and medical device representatives to provide: (a) reasonable compensation to health care providers for services; (b) peer-reviewed academic, scientific and clinical journals; © medical device demonstration and evaluation units; (d) rebates or discounts; and (e) modest food and beverage when associated with an office visit regarding the provision of product information.

 

  Healthy Skepticism on RSS   Healthy Skepticism on Facebook   Healthy Skepticism on Twitter

Please
Click to Register

(read more)

then
Click to Log in
for free access to more features of this website.

Forgot your username or password?

You are invited to
apply for membership
of Healthy Skepticism,
if you support our aims.

Pay a subscription

Support our work with a donation

Buy Healthy Skepticism T Shirts


If there is something you don't like, please tell us. If you like our work, please tell others.

Email a Friend








Cases of wilful misrepresentation are a rarity in medical advertising. For every advertisement in which nonexistent doctors are called on to testify or deliberately irrelevant references are bunched up in [fine print], you will find a hundred or more whose greatest offenses are unquestioning enthusiasm and the skill to communicate it.

The best defence the physician can muster against this kind of advertising is a healthy skepticism and a willingness, not always apparent in the past, to do his homework. He must cultivate a flair for spotting the logical loophole, the invalid clinical trial, the unreliable or meaningless testimonial, the unneeded improvement and the unlikely claim. Above all, he must develop greater resistance to the lure of the fashionable and the new.
- Pierre R. Garai (advertising executive) 1963