Healthy Skepticism Library item: 4539

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

Stafford A, Fyfe M.
Drug firms accused over doctor 'perks'
The Age (Melbourne) 2006 May 2
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/drug-firms-accused-over-perks/2006/05/01/1146335671080.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

Notes:

Ralph Faggotter’s Comments:

“…Mr Samuel said he was virtually powerless to change a system that was failing to stop pharmaceutical giants improperly promoting their products.”

The system is designed to fail.

The Australian Federal Government has a clear agenda of ideologically based de-regulation, self-regulation, and non-regulation.

Of course, the Government likes to be seen to care, so it pretends to create seemingly valuable regulatory bodies, and then quietly renders them impotent by denying the regulators essential powers.

Full text:

Drug firms accused over doctor ‘perks’

By Annabel Stafford and Melissa Fyfe
May 2, 2006

DRUG companies are facing more scrutiny of their relations with doctors, after accusations that they are offering improper inducements and using doctors to promote expensive, but unproven cancer treatments.

Australia’s competition regulator Graeme Samuel has proposed tougher regulations to clamp down on drug companies offering perks and gifts to doctors as an inducement to prescribe their medicines.

But in a damning finding, Mr Samuel said he was virtually powerless to change a system that was failing to stop pharmaceutical giants improp- erly promoting their products.

At the same time, a group of Melbourne cancer specialists has spoken out against doctors who they claim may have undeclared connections with drug companies and are misleading the public about the new generation of costly anti-cancer drugs.

The specialists say new treatments including the breast cancer drug Herceptin have been over-promoted, and it is crucial for doctors speaking to the media to disclose their connections with drug companies.

One of the specialists, Ian Haines, said the connections included payments to attend conferences, international first-class travel and “consulting” or “advising” fees.

Dr Haines said that doctors used to discuss research over sticky buns and tea. Now there was a “gravy train” that included “lavish” dinners provided by drug companies. “No one wants to be left on the platform when the gravy train goes through,” he said. “We all want our seat.”

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, in its attempt to curb such practices, has proposed that drug companies be subject to spot checks to pick up the perks and gifts they offer to doctors.

In a draft determination, the watchdog said regulations meant to stop drug companies from currying favour with doctors or advertising medicines to consumers were all but failing.

Despite this, the ACCC recommended that the current system continue – with the new spot checks – because it did not have the authority to design a better system and the existing one was better than nothing.

The findings have sparked calls for tougher regulation from consumer advocates who say aggressive marketing by drug companies has led to consumers being prescribed inappropriate medicines and paying too much.

The pharmaceutical industry regulates itself through a code of conduct, with fines of up to $200,000 for code breaches.

But the ACCC found fines were rarely imposed and when they were, most were at the lower end of the scale. The fact that several companies repeatedly breached the code indicated the sanctions were not working.

Alleged and past breaches by drug companies included:

■ Providing benefits to doctors to encourage them to prescribe their medicines.

■ Circumventing bans on advertising to consumers by promoting “disease states” such as impotence or running “educational campaigns”.

■ Making the names of generic medicines illegible in software used by GPs, resulting in expensive medicines being used.

“The sanctions are ineffective,” Australian Consumers’ Association health policy officer Viola Korczak said. “There were 51 complaints last year. But none of the sanctions were over $150,000 and the majority were around $25,000. That … is not going to stop repeat breaches.”

Ken Harvey, a senior research fellow in the La Trobe University School of Public Health said: “The ACCC is quite clearly saying that the code is not working well … but that they really think it’s the Government’s responsibility, not their’s (to fix it).”

Dr Harvey and Ms Korczak said the Government or the Therapeutic Goods Administration should be regulating the industry.

Cancer Council Victoria director David Hill welcomed the three doctors’ comments about their colleagues and drug companies. Oncologists had to be vigilant about the influence of drug companies, he said, and more transparent in public debate.

“There’s a big responsibility on clinicians to examine themselves and make sure when they are asked to make a public comment that they really do face up to any potential conflict of interest or bias that may be creeping in,” Professor Hill said.