The Pink Sheet reports on "renewed optimism" that the European Union's proposed legislation on allowing drug makers to provide information to patients on prescription-only medicines will again start moving through the legislative process. The latest thinking, however, is strongly focused on the rights of patients to receive such information, rather than industry's right to disseminate it.
An interesting and important finesse – the rights of a patient to the information but no “right” for industry to provide it. Hm.
Suggested amendments emerged on March 10 from European Parliament Member Christofer Fjellner. He's reviewing the proposed legislation for the EU parliament's Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety.
For patients, Fjellner contends that information on pharmaceuticals should only be made available to patients who are actively searching for it, i.e., information should be "pulled" by the patient rather than "pushed" by industry. Fjellner believes that companies should not be allowed to make available information on prescription-only medicines on television or in newspapers or magazines. He believes the Internet is the appropriate medium for providing information to patients.
And maybe he's right -- but is there really a difference? If a pharmaceutical company makes available information on a web page – why is that different than making it available in other media? Hm. And what about patients who do not have access to the Internet -- what about their rights?
Fjellner's stance comes as a response to a ruling from the European Court of Justice, which concluded in April 2009 that current legislation could be applied to independent journalists. One journalist, Frede Damgaard, was considered to have broken the ban on DTC advertising by writing about a particular prescription-only product, a ruling that has caused an outcry in the media.
For more on this issue, see “Eighty-Sixing Free Speech.”
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