Drugs, doctors, and dinners. Abroad.

by: los anjalis

Thu Nov 01, 2007 at 00:57:16 AM PDT

Multinational drug companies are showering doctors in the developing world with gifts and inducements to persuade them to prescribe drugs of dubious value, an investigation has revealed.

Intense marketing of medicines has resulted in up to half of drugs being wrongly prescribed, the campaign group Consumers International says in its report "Drugs, Doctors and Dinners". It calls for a ban on gifts to doctors. [...]

In Pakistan, doctors who wrote 200 prescriptions for one high-price drug were offered the down payment on a new car.

Multinational companies are turning to the developing world as profits stagnate in the West. But regulation in these countries is weak and drug sales representatives can influence prescribing by the inducements they offer [...]

Richard Lloyd, of Consumers International, said: "The pharma industry sees the developing world as a trillion-dollar opportunity... but consumer health expenditure in these countries can ill afford to be squandered." He added: "The best way to ensure patients in the developing world get rational impartial treatment is... to ban gifts for doctors."

Check out the full report "Drugs, Doctors and Dinners" (PDF, 1.49mb, 44pages) published by Consumers International.

Liveblogging from Washington, DC...

by: los anjalis

Sat Oct 06, 2007 at 12:28:18 PM PDT

We're having some serious discussions and strategizing together on health care issues, advocating for our patients and the public's health, and building a more robust organization in the process.

The NPA does not accept ANY money from pharmaceutical companies, AND advocates strongly against physicians and physicians' organizations having an unhealthy relationship with the pharmaceutical industry.

In addition, we're discussing our access to health initiatives, building our global health workforce initiative, responding to the SCHIP insurance cuts crisis, and developing our race/medicine and institutional racism (undoing racism) analyses.

It's nothing less than a party.  Of ideas.  Of energy.  Of a positive future of integrity in medicine.  And the coffee is being drunk like the wine it is at meetings like this.

Brecht and Prof Hayes

by: srijeeva

Tue Sep 25, 2007 at 19:28:05 PM PDT

A Worker's Speech To A Doctor

We know what makes us ill.
When we are ill we are told
That it's you who will heal us.

For ten years, we are told
You learned healing in fine schools
Built at the people's expense
And to get your knowledge
Spent a fortune.
So you must be able to heal.

Are you able to heal?

When we come to you
Our rags are torn off us
And you listen all over our naked body.
As to the cause of our illness
One glance at our rags would
Tell you more. It is the same cause that wears out
Our bodies and our clothes.

The pain in our shoulder comes
You say, from the damp; and this is also the reason
For the stain on the wall of our flat.
So tell us:
Where does the damp come from?

Too much work and too little food
Makes us feeble and thin.
Your prescription says:
Put on more weight.
You might as well tell a bullrush
Not to get wet.

How much time can you give us?
We see: one carpet in your flat costs
The fees you earn from
Five thousand consultations.

You'll no doubt say
You are innocent. The damp patch
On the wall of our flat
Tells the same story.

- Bertolt Brecht

There is this prof at UC Berkeley, Dr. Tyrone Hayes who has studied a particular pesticide, atrazine and its effects on amphibians.  And his findings have shown that a very small amount,(a smaller amount than is allowed to be in the water  by the EPA) effects amphibians sex organs drastically.  And he was attacked by the big pesticide company Syngenta who sells atrazine to farmers at a considerable profit. And he was  villified.  He is a black man tenured at 32 and an excellent scientist and he could not be bought.  His work and story is testimony to the lenghths industry can go if your work, your science becomes a threat. http://www.mindfully...

And I wonder what would happen if doctors in addition to studying AICD's (Automatic Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillators) studied the damp.  What would happen if we spoke out, in mass, about the damp?  It dawned on me, so late in my training that evidence for what we do and why we do it as doctors is often based on who puts up the money. 

and there is no money in studying the particular toxins that may be linked to black women and cancer, for example. There is no money in studying the damp, or treating the damp.  But those who do, and there are some.. like Dr. Tyrone Hayes can maybe lead the way for us clinicians who have a ways to go.