Healthy Skepticism Library item: 8993

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

MacDonald R.
Access to essential medicines and the pendulum of power
Lancet 2007 Mar 24; 369:(9566):983-984
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T1B-4N9XF65-F&_user=10&_coverDate=03%2F30%2F2007&_rdoc=13&_fmt=full&_orig=browse&_srch=doc-info(%23toc%234886%232007%23996300433%23646931%23FLA%23display%23Volume)&_cdi=4886&_sort=d&_docanchor=&_ct=38&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=bc0599e4d424aef6bad5d6af59a34034

Notes:

Book review
The Power of Pills: Social, Ethical and Legal Issues in Drug Development, Marketing and Pricing Jillian ClareÂ Cohen, Patricia Illingworth and UdoÂ Schuklenk, eds.
Pluto Press, 2006.
ISBN 0-745-32402-9.
Pp 320. £19·99, US$35·00

“Many factors have influenced my commitment to campaign for access to essential medicines, but two immediately leap out. When I was working in Bangladesh I witnessed a certain drug company promote the virtues of a sugar-coated vitamin pill as the most important factor in helping children grow and stay healthy. Families spent a day’s wages on these useless tablets when they could have been buying bananas, spinach, and dahl instead … The activities of drug companies that put patents before public healthâ€¹encouraged by the World Trade Organisation’s rule on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)â€¹places the pharmaceutical industry and campaigners on different sides of an impasse that is so wide there seems to be no possibility of meeting in the middle … The Power of Pills explains the social, ethical, and legal issues involved in drug development, marketing, and pricing and has contributions from an eclectic mix of academics, activists, economists, ethicists, health-care professionals, lawyers, and philosophers …
I am left wondering how much more evidence and reasoning it will take for the drug industry to meet somewhere along the impasse … experience to date shows that drug companies will do everything they can to cling on the status quo where they hold all of the power. The pendulum of power will need to swing to the other side before there is any reasonable progress…”