Healthy Skepticism Library item: 18864

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

Tuffs A
Experts criticise new German law for favouring drug companies
BMJ 2010 Oct 13; 341:
http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c5650

Abstract:

A new law on approving drugs for reimbursement by German insurance companies currently being debated in parliament could put the safety of patients at risk, experts have warned.

The law would substantially weaken the role of the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG), the German equivalent of the UK National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, and lead to inefficient and dangerous drugs being approved, say experts.

An amendment to the law proposed by the governing coalition of the Christian Democrats and the liberal Free Democratic Party says that all new …

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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