Healthy Skepticism Library item: 3119

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

Silverman M, Lee PR, Lydecker M.
Prescriptions for death: the drugging of the Third World
Berkeley: University of California Press 1982;

Abstract:

Information given in commercial compendia in the United States and the United Kingdom is compared with that in a number of developing countries for a wide variety of drugs. With many important products the dangers of serious or lethal side effects are minimized, glossed over or totally ignored and with many of these drugs claims of effectiveness are wildly exaggerated. These are not problems confined to one sector of the pharmaceutical industry but occur with multinational subsidiaries, domestic and generic companies. The book analyzes industry defences for these practices and shows that none of them are valid. Finally, it discusses the effects of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations code and the actions of consumer groups like Health Action International, Social Audit and the International Organization of Consumer Unions.

Keywords:
*content analysis/United States/United Kingdom/developing countries/commercial compendia/quality of information/Physicians’ Desk Reference/safety & risk information/industry perspective/ IFPMA/ International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations/regulation of promotion/HAI/Health Action International/Social Audit/International Organization of Consumer Unions/ domestic companies/ generic manufacturers/ research-based manufacturers/consumer groups/health and healthcare/ATTITUDES REGARDING PROMOTION: INDUSTRY/EVALUATION OF PROMOTION: COMMERCIAL DRUG COMPENDIA/EVALUATION OF PROMOTION: COMPARISON BETWEEN DEVELOPING AND DEVELOPED COUNTRIES/INFLUENCE OF PROMOTION: ACCESS TO ESSENTIAL DRUGS/INFLUENCE OF PROMOTION: HEALTH AND HEALTH CARE/PROMOTION AND HEALTH NEEDS: PROMOTION IN DEVELOPED COUNTRIES/PROMOTION AND HEALTH NEEDS: PROMOTION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES/REGULATION, CODES, GUIDELINES: CONSUMER GROUPS/REGULATION, CODES, GUIDELINES: INDUSTRY SELF-REGULATION

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Far too large a section of the treatment of disease is to-day controlled by the big manufacturing pharmacists, who have enslaved us in a plausible pseudo-science...
The blind faith which some men have in medicines illustrates too often the greatest of all human capacities - the capacity for self deception...
Some one will say, Is this all your science has to tell us? Is this the outcome of decades of good clinical work, of patient study of the disease, of anxious trial in such good faith of so many drugs? Give us back the childlike trust of the fathers in antimony and in the lancet rather than this cold nihilism. Not at all! Let us accept the truth, however unpleasant it may be, and with the death rate staring us in the face, let us not be deceived with vain fancies...
we need a stern, iconoclastic spirit which leads, not to nihilism, but to an active skepticism - not the passive skepticism, born of despair, but the active skepticism born of a knowledge that recognizes its limitations and knows full well that only in this attitude of mind can true progress be made.
- William Osler 1909