Healthy Skepticism Library item: 18908
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
Moynihan R
Drug giant takes legal action against influential government advisers
Crikey 2010 Nov 17
http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/11/17/drug-giant-takes-legal-action-against-influential-government-advisers
Full text:
The global drug giant AstraZeneca has launched legal action against 17
members of the powerful Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee, as
well as the Minister for Health.
The committee of independent advisers makes recommendations about
which medicines get listed on the $8 billion dollar Pharmaceutical
Benefits Scheme, and its decisions can have major impacts on a drug’s
profitability in Australia.
It is uncommon for drug companies to take legal proceedings against
individual members of the committee, and the action’s been slammed by
a leading drug expert as “intimidation”.
“Taking legal action against individual committee members is an
attempt at individual intimidation,” says Dr Ken Harvey, adjunct
senior lecturer at La Trobe University. “Members of this committee
are acting in the government and community’s interest and they should
not be subjected to such malicious conduct.”
AstraZeneca will not comment while the matter is before the court, but
I understand the company believes its pursuing appropriate legal
process.
The government is also declining to talk, but Federal Court documents
show the company is challenging a committee decision about its
blockbuster cholesterol-lowering drug Crestor - one of
AstraZeneca’s biggest products, generating annual global sales of
$4.5 billion. Taxpayers in Australia spent about $300 million last
year on this drug alone.
Technically, the company is challenging the recent committee decision
to treat Crestor as “interchangeable” with a competitor drug called
Lipitor, a decision that will reduce the price the government pays
AstraZeneca because Lipitor comes off patent earlier than its drug.
While the company claims the drugs aren’t “interchangeable”,
other independent bodies, including Australia’s Therapeutic
Guidelines group regards many of the cholesterol-lowering drugs as
being therapeutically equivalent and as equal first choices for
patients.
The big money Australia spends on cholesterol drugs is becoming
something of an international embarrassment, as this class alone
accounts for about 16% of the total $8 billion scheme, a dramatically
higher proportion than in some other countries.
Earlier this year, a Medical Journal of Australia study revealed we
were paying far higher prices for these drugs than England, in one
case more than four times as much. University of Sydney researchers
estimated we could have saved almost $2 billion over five years, if
we’d adopted English policies on pricing and generic drugs. Looking
forward, the researchers predicted Australians could save $9 billion
in the coming decade.
More broadly there are questions about the appropriateness of
prescribing so many powerful, costly and potentially dangerous drugs
to treat many essentially healthy people, who are simply at risk of
future illness. While many doctors fail to mention it to their
patients, this class of medicines can carry the risk of rare but very
serious muscle damage.
Astute policy makers might identify more rational drug policies as a
win-win - saving money and improving health - but they will
immediately bump up against the extraordinary political power of this
trillion-dollar industry.
Listed in London, New York and Stockholm, AstraZeneca employs more
than 60,000 people and has annual sales of $32 billion.
Coincidentally, news of the Australian court case came just days after
the company’s chief executive reportedly spoke publicly about the
need for the pharmaceutical industry to restore public trust.
*Ray Moynihan writes regularly for the British Medical Journal. His
most recent book is Sex, Lies & Pharmaceuticals
