Healthy Skepticism Library item: 2447

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

James A.
Medicines, society, and industry.
Lancet 2002 Nov 2; 360:(9343):1346
http://www.thelancet.com/journal/vol360/iss9343/full/llan.360.9343.editorial_and_review.22990.1

Abstract:

Medical journals, and this one is no exception, owe much to the pharmaceutical industry. Not only is the pharmaceutical industry the largest sponsor of medical research in some countries, and that research generates the need for many journals, but industry also contributes to journals’ profits through reprint orders, sponsored subscriptions or supplements, and display advertising. Without pharma revenue many journals could not exist. Scanning the acknowledgments and conflict of interest statements of any issue of The Lancet goes some way to illustrating the extent to which research and individuals are dependent on industry funding. And publication, of course, may help to change prescribing habits, especially if in a prominent widely read journal that generates press interest. That there is a symbiotic relation between medical journals and the pharmaceutical industry is clear, and both industries profit from each other, but it is a relation that generates unease and is open to abuse. Editors of medical journals should make decisions on content based on public-health needs, their journal’s readership, and the medical community’s needs, not on likely reprint revenues or advertising potential. Separating decisions on content from commercial influence is particularly important for medical journals because it is patients’ health that is directly affected by prescribing practices—an outcome that some journal owners would prefer to forget. The content of medical journals has to serve the public’s health over and above the needs of the pharmaceutical industry or the journals’ owners, but this is not an easy balance to achieve. The content of medical journals is just one example of the complex relation between the pharmaceutical industry and society. The industry, patients, doctors, editors and publishers, regulators, and politicians are all driven by their own agendas and are subject to various influences, some of which are extremely powerful. But at its most basic level, the primary aim of providing medicines has to be to improve the health of populations. Which disease in which population is judged important to treat, who makes those decisions, how the medicines are provided, and who profits from their provision, are all, however, subject to influence from different sectors of society. We aim to explore some of these agendas and influences on the provision of medicines to society in a series of four commissioned papers to run in consecutive weeks beginning today. We hope that the four papers will provide a critique of the roles taken by the pharmaceutical industry, particularly the transnational companies, within society. We begin with how industry provides information to sectors of society (this week’s issue) and move on to how industry interacts with governments, how it supplies medicines, and finally to whom it is accountable. We aim to generate a wider discussion and anticipate receiving much correspondence. We thank Professor Joe Collier, from the Medicines Policy Unit, St George’s Hospital Medical School, London, UK, and editor of the Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin, for his advice on the structure and content of this series. (full text)

Keywords:
*editorial United Kingdom medical journals relationships with industry conflicts-of-interest ATTITUDES REGARDING PROMOTION: MEDICAL JOURNALS ETHICAL ISSUES IN PROMOTION: MEDICAL JOURNAL EDITORSHIP SPONSORSHIP: RESEARCH