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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 16423

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

Santow S
Government wants crackdown on doctors' freebies
ABC News 2009 Sep 10
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/09/10/2681538.htm


Full text:

The Federal Government is demanding major changes to the way drug and medical companies sell the benefits of their products to doctors.

Doctors’ groups have rejected suggestions that the relationship has become too cosy and creates a perception that doctors’ opinions can be bought.

In the profession, the lobbying is referred to as “educationals”. Typically a doctor is taken out to lunch or dinner, and told about the merits of a new product or drug. Sometimes the company hospitality can extend to all-expenses-paid overseas trips.

The parliamentary secretary for health, Mark Butler, says there is a need to lift the standards of conduct between the therapeutic goods industry and medical practitioners.

“Standards across the industry are inconsistent and, in our view, I think aren’t as high as they should be to maintain public confidence in the therapeutic goods industry,” Mr Butler said.

“Public confidence is as much a matter of perception by consumers as it is of substance, and any inducements that might be perceived as impacting on the medical decisions prescribed are simply unacceptable and need to be stamped out.”

Mr Butler says reports that a group of doctors are to be flown overseas to watch a game at the World Cup “completely fails the man-in-the-front-bar or the person-on-the-average-bus test”.

Ian Chalmers, chief executive of pharmaceutical group Medicines Australia, says its regulations are tough but some competitors are giving the wider industry a bad name.

“Companies are acting in an entirely appropriate way by publishing on the website, the Medicines Australian website, details of every educational event,” Mr Chalmers said.

Journalist and author Ray Moynihan has been reporting on the issue for more than 10 years and says a doctor’s decision making can be distorted by receiving gifts and other payments from drug companies.

“Some of the campaigners on this, some of the people who have been observing this very closely for years, say that self-regulation is not the way to get the sort of clean-up that I think everyone wants to see,” Mr Moynihan said.

The Australian Medical Association concedes there may be a perception problem, but president Dr Andrew Pesce bristles at any suggestion doctors can be bought.

“We have been vilified when I don’t believe there is any demonstrable problem there,” Dr Pesce said.

“There is a perception there that private funding of education to doctors is likely to skew their educational experience.

“If the government wants to have an objective education program then it should be involved in organising that and funding it.”

Dr Pesce says he believes that, in the context of other reviews and reforms of the medical industry, doctors can justifiably feel the latest accusation is an attack on their integrity.

 

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You are going to have many difficulties. The smokers will not like your message. The tobacco interests will be vigorously opposed. The media and the government will be loath to support these findings. But you have one factor in your favour. What you have going for you is that you are right.
- Evarts Graham
See:
When truth is unwelcome: the first reports on smoking and lung cancer.