From the pages of the New York Times:
Doctors' Prescription Records
To the Editor:
A recent Business Day article reported that the Supreme Court will review a Vermont law that limits the sale of doctors’ prescription records (“A Fight Over How Drugs Are Pitched,” April 25). The high court should invalidate the law. Not only is it redundant, it also undermines federal efforts to promote drug safety.
The American Medical Association already runs a national program that allows doctors to opt out of having their data available for sale. There is no need for states to duplicate its efforts.
Further, pharmaceutical companies rely on physicians’ prescription records to disseminate F.D.A.-directed safety warnings. Without access to doctors’ prescription data, they don’t know how many patients are taking specific drugs, or for how long. Such data are crucial to addressing safety issues quickly.
PETER PITTS
New York, April 25, 2011
The writer is president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest and a former F.D.A. associate commissioner.
