Ethics in pharmaceutical medicine

The Ethical Issues Working Group of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine has published an important article in the International Journal of Pharmaceutical Medicine (1998;12:193-198). It contains the following statements:

"3.1.1 'The ethical and scientific duty (of pharmaceutical physicians) to their companies to ensure that they do not allow claims to be made which they consider unjustified'.

3.2.1 'It is the professional responsibility of pharmaceutical physicians to ensure that information provided to doctors, pharmacists, patients, and members of the public is accurate. They have an ethical responsibility to ensure that whilst complying with any relevant regulations, such information is comprehensive and comprehensible'.

3.3.1 'Doctors are increasingly being encouraged to practise medicine based on all the available evidence?.. pharmaceutical physicians, therefore, have a particular ethical responsibility to ensure that the evidence on which doctors should make their prescribing decisions is freely available'.

3.3.4 'Pharmaceutical physicians may be aware of information regarding a medicine which, for various reasons, has not been published. This may be because of editorial decisions, or more controversially, because of commercial decisions. Selected publication is therefore a dilemma which can only be resolved by encouraging the provision of all information known about a medicine to those entitled to it. Indeed, it is unethical for a pharmaceutical physician to endorse the withholding of such information.

In this regard, the Faculty particularly recommends that pharmaceutical physicians should encourage that the outcomes of all clinical trials conducted on a medicine should be reported."