Drug maker's PR firm is force behind blood clot awareness campaign

doi:10.1136/bmj.a502

BMJ 2008;336:1460-1461 (28 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.a502

News

Drug maker’s PR firm is force behind blood clot awareness campaign

Ray Moynihan

¹ Melbourne

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The international public relations firm Fleishman-Hillard, workingwith funds from the drug maker Sanofi-Aventis, is helping runa high profile campaign to raise public awareness about bloodclots.

The campaign, currently running in Australia under the bannerof a coalition of health professionals, has generated headlinesclaiming that blood clots are more deadly than AIDS and articlessuggesting that injections for patients at risk of developingclots may become mandatory.

A national expert on drugs, Alasdair Millar, said that any suggestionthat all medical in-patients should receive injections to preventclots are "extreme and scandalous" and "could cause more harmthan good."

Evidence suggests that many hospital patients, whether surgicalor medical, could benefit from a greater use of drugs to preventserious clots, including low molecular weight heparins. ButProfessor Millar is concerned that these drugs will be givento patients who do not need them, thus exposing them . . . [Full text of this article]

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