Healthy Skepticism Library item: 20251
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
Saying 'no thanks' to the pharmaceutical industry's undue influence
Prescrire 2012 July 23;
Abstract:
In a published response to Andrew Jack’s article “Mea culpa: are multi-billion dollar fines forcing drug companies to clean up their act?” (BMJ online, 18 July 2012), Prescrire points out that the need to root out undue influence does not stop there.
Certainly, the medical profession should clean up its act, as suggested in the feature on illegal promotion of antidepressants by GSK (1), but so should health authorities.
Recent drug disasters, such as the Mediator° (benfluorex) fiasco in France, are testament to the harmful effects of conflicts of interest at the institutional level (2).
Not surprisingly then, as French prescribers have gained greater awareness of drug marketing practices (3)(4), they have adopted a critical stance towards pharmaceutical companies’ promotional activities (5); and some 19 000 of them have responded by seeking out, and paying for, their own independent information and continuing education from reliable sources, such as the French journal La Revue Prescrire (6) (Table 1). Prescrire is entirely financed by its subscribers; there are no grants, no advertising, no shareholders and no sponsors.
Table 1: Breakdown of paying subscribers to La Revue Prescrire
Occupation September 2010 September 2011
Number % Number %
General practitioners 14 368 49.3% 16 857 48.7%
Specialists 1 480 5.1% 1 996 5.7%
Pharmacists 5 909 20.3% 6 872 19.8%
Others 7 345 25.3% 8 947 25.8%
Total circulation 29 102 100% 34 642 100%
Why? Because access to independent, reliable data is essential for making informed decisions, with patients, about various treatment options. Critical appraisal of ‘official’ clinical guidelines from an evidence-based perspective is also relevant (7).
While many might still accept the advances of the pharmaceutical industry, one should not underestimate the growing number of healthcare professionals who opt to pay for their own continuing education and who reply “no thanks” to industry’s attempts to win them over (the cost of which ends up being paid for by patients and society at large).