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FEATURE: Hannah Brown Sweetening the pill BMJ 2007; 334: 664-666 [Full text]

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When doctors get influenced, what chance do patients stand?

M Justin S Zaman   (5 April 2007)

Re: When doctors get influenced, what chance do patients stand?

Onisillos Sekkides   (5 April 2007)

When doctors get influenced, what chance do patients stand? 5 April 2007
M Justin S Zaman, Research Fellow in Epidemiology/Specialist Registrar in Cardiology University College London Send response to journal: Re: When doctors get influenced, what chance do patients stand?	Direct-to-consumer has in the past decade grown into a multibillion- dollar industry in the United States. Drugs that are promoted are the most profitable for drug companies end up being overprescribed. While US lobbying groups spend about $2 billion a year trying to convince politicians, pharmaceutical companies spend nearly 10 times that much to influence the US's 600,000 to 700,000 physicians. Almost 85-90 percent is spent on doctors, for free drug samples, speaker's fees, consultation fees, and 'educational'grants. [1] In a BMJ editorial 2 years ago, R E Ferner stated 'The industry spends £3.3bn annually on research in the UK, financing about 90% of all clinical drug trials, but develops few truly innovative drugs. It influences the interpretation and reporting of results of trials. Negative results can be dismissed as erroneous ("failed trials"), whereas positive ones can be published repeatedly in different guises.' [2] This is a dangerous road we're starting out on. Let us acknowledge and appreciate the role the pharmaceutical industry plays in helping us to practice good medicine, but let's protect our patients - especially as we as doctors can not even police ourselves. 1. JEROME P. KASSIRER. Professor at Tufts University School of Medicine. On The Take: How Medicine's Complicity With Big Business Can Endanger Your Health. 2. R E Ferner. BMJ 2005;330:855-856 (16 April) Competing interests: My interests are those of the patient and of society
Re: When doctors get influenced, what chance do patients stand? 5 April 2007
Onisillos Sekkides, Medical Editor NW1 7BY Send response to journal: Re: Re: When doctors get influenced, what chance do patients stand?	In addition to this spending is the money spent by the pharmaceutical industry to redefine the intellectual landscape before a drug is even marketed. Even while a drug is still going through trials the pharmaceutical industry employs various medical communications agencies to litter the medical literature with papers that give a favorable spin to a relevant field of medicine. This spin is often done so that the genuine efficacy of the drug is overlooked and some other aspect can be promoted as beneficial. Competing interests: None declared