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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 18698

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

Jack A
Pharmaceuticals: Perils for pill pushers
The Finanical Times 2010 Sep 21
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/5cc9d62e-c5b5-11df-ab48-00144feab49a,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5cc9d62e-c5b5-11df-ab48-00144feab49a.html&_i_referer=


Full text:

When the US Food and Drug Administration presented an award last week to honour the 96-year-old Frances Kelsey, a former employee who helped save America from thalidomide, the mood in the agency’s corridors was not purely one of celebration.

Back in the 1960s, her actions blocked US approval of the morning sickness pill that caused thousands of children in Europe to be born with birth defects. Yet 50 years later, in the agency in Washington and at its counterpart in London, the European Medicines Agency, officials still fret over such life-and-death decisions.

 

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...to influence multinational corporations effectively, the efforts of governments will have to be complemented by others, notably the many voluntary organisations that have shown they can effectively represent society’s public-health interests…
A small group known as Healthy Skepticism; formerly the Medical Lobby for Appropriate Marketing) has consistently and insistently drawn the attention of producers to promotional malpractice, calling for (and often securing) correction. These organisations [Healthy Skepticism, Médecins Sans Frontières and Health Action International] are small, but they are capable; they bear malice towards no one, and they are inscrutably honest. If industry is indeed persuaded to face up to its social responsibilities in the coming years it may well be because of these associations and others like them.
- Dukes MN. Accountability of the pharmaceutical industry. Lancet. 2002 Nov 23; 360(9346)1682-4.