Offline: Falling out with pharma

Abstract

I am grateful to Tom Yates, from University College London, for alerting me to a campaign that deserves our support. His target is a document, whose creation was led by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI), entitled “Guidance on collaboration between healthcare professionals and the pharmaceutical industry”. It is signed by some great and good institutions: the Royal Colleges of Physicians, Psychiatrists, and General Practitioners, the British Pharmacological Society, Department of Health, the Scottish and Welsh Governments, and even the British Medical Association. And The Lancet. Let me quote Tom Yates in his own words, with additions for clarification. “The guidelines are problematic as they contain claims that are demonstrably false. For example, points 4 [Industry plays a valid and important role in the provision of medical education] and 6 [Medical representatives can be a useful resource for healthcare professionals] in ‘10 things you should know’ are at odds with Geoff Spurling's recent [PLoS Medicine, 2010] systematic review on the impact that information from pharmaceutical companies has upon prescribing [“With rare exceptions, studies of exposure to information provided directly by pharmaceutical companies have found associations with higher prescribing frequency, higher costs, or lower prescribing quality…”]. Point 3 [Information about industry-sponsored trials is publicly available] implies that hidden trials data is a historical problem, where, as you will know, it is now the focus of a major campaign and at least one [UK] parliamentary enquiry…Do you think there is any possibility that The Lancet might be able to publicly distance themselves from the Guidelines?” The statements made in the “guidance” certainly do not match the latest evidence about the behaviour of pharmaceutical companies today. Indeed, this evidence undermines the principles we originally signed up to, principles that attempted to forge a new and more constructive partnership between medicine and the pharmaceutical industry. It's time for us to withdraw our name from the “guidance” as it currently stands. Falling out with pharmaIn response to Richard Horton's Offline piece “Falling out with pharma” (Feb 2, p 358),1 I'd like to clarify that the Guidance on collaboration between healthcare professionals and the pharmaceutical industry2 is not a document produced by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI), nor is it led by the ABPI, but is something that was agreed across the group of organisations that signed up to it. The guidance is a live document and is reviewed regularly (the next scheduled review will take place this month) to ensure that it represents best practice across all the organisations involved. Full-Text PDF