Healthy Skepticism Library item: 5642

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Publication type: news

Cresswell A.
Drug-watch site fights for survival
The Australian Newspaper 2006 Jul 18
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19825467-2702,00.html

Keywords:
AusPharm Consumer Health Watch

Full text:

Drug-watch site fights for survival

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19825467-2702,00.html

Health editor Adam Cresswell
July 18, 2006

THE future of a website created to expose dubious claims about
over-the-counter drugs is uncertain after it was taken to court by a
company whose products it wanted scrutinised.

The AusPharm Consumer Health Watch website, set up earlier this year,
faces thousands of dollars in costs as it battles the action by Schwabe
Pharma and distributor Natural Health Products.

The companies got a temporary injunction to prevent publication of a
report on their herbal product Tebonin, an extract of the herb gingko
biloba. The drug was promoted as an “effective treatment for a range of
conditions … including tinnitus, vertigo, peripheral circulation and
cognitive function”. The companies are applying for the injunction to be
made permanent.

It is understood that the three remaining people behind the AusPharm
site have spent $15,000 of their own money fighting the case and are now
willing to accept a permanent injunction in exchange for the matter
being dropped.

However, the report has also been lodged with the Therapeutic Goods
Administration, which is expected to make its own assessment when the
case is over.

In his interim judgment, earlier this month, Federal Court judge Andrew
Greenwood said the review procedure set out on the AusPharm website did
not appear to have been followed, in that a draft report was sent to the
TGA at the same time as it was sent to Schwabe, before the drug maker’s
comments could be included.

He said the report was based on an assessment of previously published
studies looking at gingko biloba in the treatment of tinnitus. But a
“further difficulty” was that the report was not clear on which studies
related to gingko biloba and which to the particular extract used in
Tebonin.

The judgment said the “public interest is served” by the report’s
authors making their criticisms to the TGA, “which in turn will provide
a balanced and proportional opportunity for the applicants to respond”.

Stephen Dickens, a partner at Schwabe Australia’s solicitors Nichol
Robinson Halletts, said the case was “not about trying to stifle public
debate” about drug safety.

“What (Schwabe and Natural Health Products) were concerned about here
was the process by which these draft and final reports were prepared,”
he said.

One of the three remaining backers of the AusPharm site, La Trobe
University academic Ken Harvey, said the case was important because it
highlighted the fact that many claims used to promote non-prescription
drugs were not independently verified.

“Most people assume that because Australia has a good regulatory system,
that things have been checked out,” he said.

“Many of them are not aware that the claims for most complementary
medicines are not checked out.”