Healthy Skepticism Library item: 2501

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

Abraham J.
The pharmaceutical industry as a political player.
Lancet 2002 Nov 9; 360:(9344):1498-502
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=12433532

Abstract:

The pharmaceutical industry has produced many drugs that have benefited man. Political frameworks designed to govern the industry must maintain these benefits. However, regulation needs to be sufficiently robust to protect public health from drugs that are unsafe, ineffective, or unnecessary. The extent of industry influence over drug regulation, at the expense of other interested parties, suggests that the current system could be more robust. The many ways in which the pharmaceutical industry can influence governments and regulatory agencies are discussed, and methods by which this influence can be curbed are suggested.

Keywords:
Conflict of Interest Drug Industry/legislation & jurisprudence Drug Industry/standards* Economic Competition Government Legislation, Drug/standards* Politics* *analysis United Kingdom conflict-of-interest lobbying politics REGULATIONS, CODES, GUIDELINES: DIRECT GOVERNMENT REGULATION

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Far too large a section of the treatment of disease is to-day controlled by the big manufacturing pharmacists, who have enslaved us in a plausible pseudo-science...
The blind faith which some men have in medicines illustrates too often the greatest of all human capacities - the capacity for self deception...
Some one will say, Is this all your science has to tell us? Is this the outcome of decades of good clinical work, of patient study of the disease, of anxious trial in such good faith of so many drugs? Give us back the childlike trust of the fathers in antimony and in the lancet rather than this cold nihilism. Not at all! Let us accept the truth, however unpleasant it may be, and with the death rate staring us in the face, let us not be deceived with vain fancies...
we need a stern, iconoclastic spirit which leads, not to nihilism, but to an active skepticism - not the passive skepticism, born of despair, but the active skepticism born of a knowledge that recognizes its limitations and knows full well that only in this attitude of mind can true progress be made.
- William Osler 1909