Healthy Skepticism Library item: 19065

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

Rose D
Medical journal bans drug company ads
The Sydney Morning Herald 2011 Feb 3
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/medical-journal-bans-drug-company-ads-20110203-1aev8.html

Full text:

An Australian medical journal has “stopped all drug advertising forthwith” over concerns it could unduly influence doctors, and has called on similar publications to do the same.

The journal of Emergency Medicine Australasia, which publishes the latest research and unique patient cases in the field of emergency medicine, has announced it will no longer carry advertisements paid for by pharmaceutical companies.

Such advertising could “change the prescribing practices of doctors”, said professors George Jelinek and Anthony Brown in a joint statement on Thursday.

“It is time to show leadership and make a stand, and medical journals have a critical role to play in this,” they said.

“At Emergency Medicine Australasia we have, therefore, drawn a line in the sand, and have stopped all drug advertising forthwith.

“We invite other journals to show their support and follow suit by declaring their hand and doing the same.”

Prof Jelinek is medical director and professorial fellow in the Emergency Practice Innovation Centre at St Vincent’s Hospital and the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Melbourne.

Prof Brown is from the Department of Emergency Medicine at Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, and the School of Medicine at the University of Queensland.

They said the ban followed discussions with fellow emergency medicine specialists, who had aired concerns such as:

- Advertised drugs were supported by evidence that was neither “of reasonable quality, nor independent”.

- There were cases of “dubious and unethical” research practices by the industry, including “ghost authorship” where scientific papers do not disclose all of their authors.

- Academics could also face industry pressure to withhold negative research, and together this could “inflate views of the efficacy” of heavily promoted drugs.

The professors also said drug ads were counter to a medical journal’s mission to provide objective data that enabled doctors to make judgments based on the best available evidence.

“Meanwhile doctors – and indeed journal editors – generally deny they are influenced (by the ads), yet clearly they are,” they said.

“Drug companies value drug advertising in medical journals because it works … generating at least US$2 – US$5 in revenues for every dollar spent.”

Australian law restricts pharmaceutical companies to advertising their products only in medical journals, and about a dozen specialist and subscription-based magazines and newspapers that target the nation’s health professionals.

Peak pharmaceutical body Medicines Australia (MA) said the professors’ stated concerns were a “gross misrepresentation” of the industry’s interaction with doctors.

“The fact is the industry has a strict code of conduct that requires companies to meet a high ethical standard,” said MA chief executive Dr Brendan Shaw.

“Advertising in medical journals must be accurate, balanced and fully supported by government-approved product information.

“It is a legitimate means of keeping doctors abreast of the choice of new medicines that are available to them.”

He said there was a global policy requiring drug companies to publish the results of clinical trials whether they had a positive or negative outcome, and all contributing researchers should be named.

Emergency Medicine Australasia is the journal of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine.