Drug firm’s legal action against government advisers is described as “intimidation”

doi:10.1136/bmj.c6527

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Ray Moynihan

¹Byron Bay, Australia

The drug company AstraZeneca has launched legal action against an influential committee of independent advisers to the Australian government.

Documents lodged with a federal court show that the company has begun proceedings against 17 members of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee and the federal health minister.

Neither AstraZeneca nor the government will comment on the nature of the case against the powerful committee, which makes recommendations on which drugs attract subsidies—and the conditions attached to those subsidies—in Australia’s £4bn (€4.7bn; $6.4bn) publicly …