According to a new editorial in the Lancet, “From February to April this year, the European Commission (EC) held a public consultation on proposed legal changes that would allow pharmaceutical companies to provide information to patients about prescription-only drugs via all available media. The Commission's proposal states that the ban on direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) in Europe would remain. However, many critics rightly feel that allowing the industry to provide information to patients is effectively DTCA under a different name.”
Who are these critics? What are the agendas? Where does their funding come from? On these questions the Lancet is silent.
The Lancet opines, “Patients' access to quality information is variable across the European Union's 27 member states and the Commission is right to want to address this inequality. But the pharmaceutical industry's obvious financial conflicts of interest mean that drug information provided by them is likely to be prone to bias.”
“Likely to be biased?” On what do they base this rather strong statement? Isn’t solid, unbiased information in the best interests of both sales and the public health? Isn’t there a more inherent “bias” by having payers control what information consumers get to see? And in the EU, “payers” = “government.”
The editorial concludes, “Patients have a fundamental right to access good quality, objective information on medicines. The EC's final proposal, due out later this year, must empower patients and not the drug industry.”
Why not empower the drug industry to empower patients? That’s what the pending EC directive is all about.
And as far as the Lancet stipulating bias, consider the words of Robert Benchley:
"Tell us your phobias, and we will tell you what you are afraid of."
