Healthy Skepticism Library item: 6

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

Minchin L, Hughes G.
Push for action on drug firms
The Age 2003 Dec 15
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/12/14/1071336810347.html?from=storyrhs

Full text:

Health consumer advocates have called for independent funding of patient groups to prevent drug company sponsors using them to promote their products.

Australian Consumers Association health policy officer Martyn Goddard said the Federal Government should establish an independent funding body to keep patient advocates free of serious conflicts of interest.

“What we need is an honest broker who will take this funding, pool it and dole it out, to put the drug companies and politicians at arm’s length from consumer organisations,” Mr Goddard said.

“The Government will probably say that would be another major level of bureaucracy, but it wouldn’t have to be at all.”

The Age revealed at the weekend that many patient advocacy groups relied heavily or entirely on pharmaceutical company sponsorship.

Drug companies also fund disease awareness campaigns urging people to see their doctors, raising concerns of “disease mongering”.

Doctors’ Reform Society president Tim Woodruff said full government funding of health consumer groups and medical education and research would be “an investment which would save money and lead to better health”.

He said the pharmaceutical industry spent about $1 billion a year on marketing in Australia, in particular targeting doctors through providing gifts and free travel to influence the types of drugs they prescribe.

“To suggest that the best money-making industry in the world would waste all that money knowing it doesn’t work is ridiculous,” Dr Woodruff said.

South Australian general practitioner and founder of the international lobby group Healthy Scepticism, Peter Mansfield, said the federal or state governments should “buy out” pharmaceutical industry sponsorship of patient groups, as had happened with tobacco company sponsorship of sporting clubs.

He said it was time taxpayers realised that the cost of pharmaceutical industry sponsorships and grants was built into drug prices, making them higher, while also giving companies control over groups.

“It would be better to do that through government channels and pay less for drugs and tell the drug companies we don’t want them to be funding these groups,” he said.

He said funds could come from money the Government saved on buying cheaper drugs through the pharmaceutical benefits scheme.

“That still means that they’ve got a conflict of interest, but it is a conflict of interest with the Government rather than companies wanting to sell a particular product,” Dr Mansfield said. “I think that is a better conflict of interest to have.”

But Sydney GP Robyn Napier, who chairs the Australian Medical Association’s federal therapeutics committee, said she did not think the cost of medicine would fall because patient groups lost drug sponsorships.

Dr Napier, who is also on the code of conduct committee for national pharmaceutical association Medicines Australia, said she was happy for the industry to continue self-regulating its relationship.