Talk:Pharmaceutical industry/Archives/2019

Controversy about drug marketing and lobbying

This section has a lot of issues with unsourced statements and unusually non-specific language. It makes the opinions of the authors clear, but I'm not sure it doesn't need a major rewrite if the goal is to inform.

There has been increasing compared to what baseline and as of what date? controversy surrounding pharmaceutical marketing and influence. There have been accusations and findings of influence on doctors and other health professionals through drug reps including the constant provision of marketing 'gifts' and biased information to health professionals;[105]

Need a better reference here, the cited source refers only to a single company's behavior in 2004 with respect to a single drug

highly prevalent advertising in journals and conferences; funding independent healthcare organizations and health promotion campaigns; lobbying physicians and politicians (more than any other industry in the US[106]); sponsorship of medical schools or nurse training; sponsorship of continuing educational events, with influence on the curriculum;[107] and hiring physicians as paid consultants on medical advisory boards.

No sources are provided for any of these statements except for continuing education.

Some advocacy groups, such as No Free Lunch and AllTrials, have criticized the effect of drug marketing to physicians because they say it biases physicians to prescribe the marketed drugs even when others might be cheaper or better for the patient.[108]

There have been related accusations of disease mongering[109](over-medicalising) to expand the market for medications. An inaugural conference on that subject took place in Australia in 2006.[110] In 2009, the Government-funded National Prescribing Service launched the "Finding Evidence – Recognising Hype" program, aimed at educating GPs on methods for independent drug analysis.[111]

Can we provide higher quality text and supporting references (more recent than 2006) here? Saying there have been accusations is hardly heavy hitting language. There have also been claims of alien abduction. What is the evidence?

A 2005 review by a special committee of the UK government came to all the above conclusions in a European Union context[112] whilst also highlighting the contributions and needs of the industry.

The link is broken. Would be good to have solid referernces here, again ones that reflect current conditions and not those of 15 years ago.

Meta-analyses have shown that psychiatric studies sponsored by pharmaceutical companies are several times more likely to report positive results, and if a drug company employee is involved the effect is even larger.[113][114][115] Influence has also extended to the training of doctors and nurses in medical schools, which is being fought.

No reference. When was this being fought? Is it still happening?

It has been argued that the design of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the expansion of the criteria represents an increasing medicalization of human nature, or "disease mongering", driven by drug company influence on psychiatry.[116] The potential for direct conflict of interest has been raised, partly because roughly half the authors who selected and defined the DSM-IV psychiatric disorders had or previously had financial relationships with the pharmaceutical industry.[117]

As noted above, it has also been argued that alien abductions are common. Could we get some better language here and some assessment of the situation other than someone somewhere at sometime expressed this opinion?

In the US, starting in 2013, under the Physician Financial Transparency Reports (part of the Sunshine Act), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has to collect information from applicable manufacturers and group purchasing organizations in order to report information about their financial relationships with physicians and hospitals. Data are made public in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services website. The expectation is that relationship between doctors and Pharmaceutical industry will become fully transparent.[118]

In a report conducted by the Center for Responsive Politics, there were more than 1,100 lobbyists working in some capacity for the pharmaceutical business in 2017. In the first quarter of 2017, the health products and pharmaceutical industry spent $78 million on lobbying members of the United States Congress.[119] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:100C:B21F:4391:D413:D160:F0EB:5B7E (talk) 13:21, 6 November 2019 (UTC)