Healthy Skepticism Library item: 15005

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

Horton R.
The UK's NHS and pharma: from schism to symbiosis
The Lancet 2009 Feb 7; 373:(9662):435 - 436
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2809%2960148-3/fulltext

Abstract:

The pharmaceutical industry is easy to criticise. Many observers-including this journal-have pointed to unscrupulous marketing, substandard research, and a pharmaceutical culture driven by the interests of the private sector rather than those of patients or the public. In the UK a nadir was reached in 2005 with the publication of a House of Commons Health Select Committee report, The Influence of the Pharmaceutical Industry . 1 Members of Parliament concluded that medicines were promoted and used in …