Dr Spin Doctor

Abstract

"How do changes in society and in our thinking affect drug sales? In the 1980s, direct to consumer (DTC) sales were shunned; the arrival of patient empowerment meant that DTC advertising suddenly made ample sense. Advocacy groups (funded partly by pharma) also played a part in promoting sales. While in 1991, 80% of industry-sponsored trials were conducted in academic centres, by 2004, 70 % were in the private sector. The part which took me quite by surprise, though, was the last one. Because the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics carries no drug company ads and the National Bioethics Conference that the journal has organised has never received drug industry financial support, I had always assumed that there could be no healthy relationship between an ethics organisation and pharma. I am now disabused of that notion. It appears that there are many ethicists on the payroll of drug companies and that there are institutional review boards and centres for bioethics which have been supported by grants given by the drug industry. Not that they think differently from the other bodies - the American Medical Association in 2001 launched a campaign to educate doctors about ethical issues arising from drug company gifts: the campaign was funded by the industry."(pg 120)