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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 16475

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: Broadcast

Mares P
Turning off the drug company drip feed to doctors
National Interest : ABC Radio National 2009 Sep 11
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/nationalinterest/stories/2009/2683547.htm


Full text:

In the United States, the world’s biggest drug company Pfizer has agreed to pay a record US$2.3 billion to settle civil and criminal actions brought against it for illegally marketing a painkiller that has since been withdrawn from sale.

Pfizer allegedly instructed sales staff to tell doctors that the drug Bextra could be used to treat acute pain at doses well above those approved by health authorities, even though dangerious side effects – risks to kidneys, skin and heart – increased with dosage.

It’s a blatant example of a pharmaceutical company trying to boost profits by swaying the professional decisions of clinicians – something that also happens here in Australia – whether it’s drug company freebies like the branded pens and notepads that litter doctors desks, or industry sponsored conferences and education sessions.

Regulating the relationship between doctors and drug companies is an issue that has been excercising the mind of Philip Mitchell, Scientia Professor and Head of the School of Psychiatry at the University of New South Wales.

 

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As an advertising man, I can assure you that advertising which does not work does not continue to run. If experience did not show beyond doubt that the great majority of doctors are splendidly responsive to current [prescription drug] advertising, new techniques would be devised in short order. And if, indeed, candor, accuracy, scientific completeness, and a permanent ban on cartoons came to be essential for the successful promotion of [prescription] drugs, advertising would have no choice but to comply.
- Pierre R. Garai (advertising executive) 1963