Consumers fight to halt move towards direct to consumer advertising in Europe

An international alliance of consumer and other groups has attacked the European Commission, accusing it of supporting the drug industry's push for direct to consumer advertising in Europe.

US-style advertising of prescription drugs aimed directly at consumers is currently prohibited in Europe, and attempts to overturn the ban were firmly rejected by the European parliament in 2002 (BMJ 2002;325:990 doi: 10.1136/bmj.325.7371.990/a).

However, the drug industry and elements within the European Commission are pushing to change the rules so that drug companies can provide more information to patients across Europe, a move that critics argue is an underhand way of introducing advertising.

Taking a position in support of loosening the rules, a European Commission draft report that is currently out for public discussion states, “The focus should be on the availability and quality of information, and not its source,” and it says that “the pharmaceutical industry has the potential to be an important source of information,” as long as the information is reliable, objective, and non-promotional.

In a strongly worded letter sent to two commissioners early this month, the alliance, which is made up of three organisations, the International Society of Drug Bulletins, Health Action International, and Medicines in Europe Forum, claims that drug companies are “utterly incapable of providing the reliable comparative information needed by patients.”

The letter argues that patients and citizens should be protected “from the influence of advertising masquerading as ‘information.'”

A Health Action International spokeswoman, Barbara Mintzes, said it makes no sense to look to companies for objective information, because they have responsibilities to shareholders to maximise sales. “They can't be expected to provide non-promotional information to help people make treatment choices,” she said. Ms Mintzes recently wrote an article in the BMJ saying that patients' groups should not take funding from the drug industry (BMJ 2007;334:935, 5 May doi: 10.1136/bmj.39185.394005.AD).

The European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industry Associations has hit back at the critics and claims that it does not want aggressive US-style direct to consumer advertising in Europe but simply more freedom to participate in providing information.

The federation's director general, Brian Ager, said that the industry wants the European authorities to allow companies to provide “non-promotional” information to patients, which would be governed by a self regulatory code of conduct like those currently covering industry communications with professionals. “We want to police ourselves,” he said.

That industry federation is just one of the industry organisations represented on the Pharmaceutical Forum, a body created in 2005 by the European Commission to help improve the industry's competitiveness.

The Pharmaceutical Forum is currently overseeing one part of the European Commission's public consultation on changes to the rules concerning information for patients. However, the alliance has attacked the Pharmaceutical Forum as not properly representative of patients' groups, as well as being secretive about its methods and running a public consultation that it describes as a “sham.”

The key patients' group represented on the Pharmaceutical Forum is a new organisation called the European Patients' Forum, which received almost its entire 2006 budget from the industry, including large grants from GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, and the US umbrella organisation the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA).

Defending the Pharmaceutical Forum, a spokesperson from the European Commission said, “The public consultation was a genuine attempt to consult the wider public health community and certainly not a sham.”

Although that consultation is now closed, a second one on the same topic is open until the end of June.