Healthy Skepticism Library item: 20057

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: Magazine

Smith P
Taking gifts is criminal
Australian Doctor 2006 Aug 187
http://www.australiandoctor.com.au/news/latest-news/taking-gifts-is-criminal

Full text:

GPs should face penalties, fines and even jail for accepting or soliciting “unethical inducements” from pharmaceutical companies according to one commentator weighing into the seemingly endless debate.

Amid continuing media scrutiny of the relationship between pharmaceutical companies and doctors, the call have was made for doctors accepting the industry’s “largess” of branded pens, notepads and sandwiches to be subject to criminal penalties.

Writing in last week’s Australian Financial Review (10 August), business consultant and director of
Melbourne’s Eureka Project Mr Tony Cutcliffe said:

“Unethical inducements by drug companies effectively amount to bribery, which requires an accomplice. It follows that the onus for compliance involving pharmaceuticals should weigh as heavily on the prescribing doctors. Just as it is wrong for a drug manufacturer to offer an inducement, so it must be wrong for a doctor to solicit one or accept one.”

The call came after the ACCC ruled out publicly naming doctors who accepted drug company hospitality.