Healthy Skepticism Library item: 19080

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

Sweet M
Australian medical journal says no to drug industry advertising
BMJ 2011 Feb 8; 342:
http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.d884.extract

Abstract:

A medical journal’s decision to stop accepting pharmaceutical advertisements has prompted calls for journal publishers to break their links with the drug industry.

An editorial in the latest Emergency Medicine Australasia (doi: 10.1111/j.1742-6723.2010.01393 ) says that the journal’s move is a response to growing evidence about the detrimental effects of the drug industry in medicine, including claims that the industry distorts research findings and engages in dubious and unethical publishing practices.

George Jelinek, a former editor of the journal, and Anthony Brown, editor in chief, wrote, “Marketing of drugs by the pharmaceutical industry, whose prime aim is to bias readers towards prescribing a particular product, is fundamentally at odds with the mission of medical journals.”

The editorial says that …