Doctors, patients, and the pharmaceutical industry

doi:10.1136/bmj.b443

Published 3 February 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b443
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b443

Editorials

Doctors, patients, and the pharmaceutical industry

New report reflects a working party that has lost its way

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

On 4 February 2009, the Royal College of Physicians of London(RCP) published a report entitled Innovating for Health: Patients,Physicians, the Pharmaceutical Industry and the NHS.¹ The reportis the outcome of deliberations by a working party convenedby the college in September 2007, chaired by Richard Horton(editor of the Lancet), and it comprises 70 pages and 42 recommendations.Despite its heritage the work is flawed, thereby diminishingthe validity of the recommendations and the obligation to takethem seriously.

The ideal working party has clear and understandable terms ofreference; has a membership selected to tackle the problemsat hand; concentrates primarily on resolving questions posedby its terms; produces a report that sets out the problems insuch a way that each recommendation follows logically from thetext; and finally, offers recommendations that are realisticand correctly targeted. In this instance, these ideals are . . . [Full text of this article]

Joe Collier, emeritus professor of medicines policy

¹ St George’s, London SW17 0RE

jcollier@sgul.ac.uk

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This article has been cited by other articles:

Horton, R. (2009). Chair of RCP working party responds to editorial. BMJ 338: b767-b767 [Full text]
Collier, J. (2009). Author's reply. BMJ 338: b768-b768 [Full text]

Rapid Responses:

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