Healthy Skepticism Library item: 2810

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

Erill S.
Clinical pharmacology in Spain.
Clin Pharmacol Ther 1974 Sep; 16:(3):597-604

Abstract:

There are clinical pharmacology programs in three Spanish medical centers. All have developed from pharmacology departments, and joint appointments do not exist at this early stage in the development of clinical pharmacology. Recent legislation exerting increased regulatory control over drug products (specialties) has been exacted, but the challenges facing clinical pharmacology in evaluating and selecting useful and safe therapeutic agents from the myriad of new and existing preparations remains immense. [author’s abstract]
The law requires drug companies to provide protocols of clinical trials only if they are considered necessary. A 1970 modification of the law requires pharmacokinetic data and reports from clinical trials in the applications submitted for marketing new drugs. The need for more complete and updated investigational and marketing regulations is strongly felt. Most of the drug information used by physicians comes from the promotional activities of the pharmaceutical industry. The content of the Vademecum Daimon, the equivalent of the Physicians’ Desk Reference, depends solely on material supplied by the drug companies. Only 19.7% of the drugs are fully acceptable for the indications stated. For 89% of drugs, no mention is made of contraindications, and only 7% of products have accurate descriptions of the contraindications. Analysis of the clinical trials published in the 1971 and 1972 issues of the two leading Spanish medical journals found an almost total lack of adequate control data.

Keywords:
*analysis/Spain/Communication Curriculum Drug Combinations Drug Industry Drug Utilization Legislation, Drug Pharmaceutical Preparations/standards Pharmacology*/education Pharmacopoeias Schools, Medical Spain

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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