Healthy Skepticism Library item: 18780
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
Hall J
Study ties drug firm promotions to bad health
The Toronto Star 2010 Oct 20
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/thestar/access/2168051811.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT
Abstract:
Pharmaceutical sales reps often offer doctors free meals and textbooks
during office visits, says [Joel Lexchin], of York’s School of Health
Policy and Management. “But for the most part, this is not a bribe
kind of relationship,” he adds. “This sets up a relationship whereby
doctors view sales representatives not as sales people, but as friends.”
Full text:
Physician exposure to drug company promotions can cause patients physical and financial suffering and provides no benefits to prescribing practices, a York University study shows.
Yet multi-billion-dollar efforts by pharmaceutical giants to get doctors to prescribe their products add 10 to 20 per cent to Canada’s annual drug costs, the study suggests.
The study, which looked at some 58 international papers on drug promotion published over half a century, found such exposure often increased the amount of medications doctors prescribed, made them choose more costly drugs and could lead to unnecessary prescriptions.
It was released Tuesday by the online journal PLoS Medicine.
“It’s difficult … after looking at all this evidence, to argue that there’s any reason why doctors should expose themselves to (drug) promotion,” says Dr. Joel Lexchin, a paper co-author.
Pharmaceutical sales reps often offer doctors free meals and textbooks during office visits, says Lexchin, of York’s School of Health Policy and Management. “But for the most part, this is not a bribe kind of relationship,” he adds. “This sets up a relationship whereby doctors view sales representatives not as sales people, but as friends.”
Lexchin estimates drug companies spend between $2.4 billion and $4.8 billion a year promoting their products in Canada.
The costs are passed on in higher prices to patients, insurance companies and government drug programs.
That represents between 10 and 20 per cent of the country’s annual $25 billion drug bill, Lexchin says.
