E-drug: Advertising in national formularies (cont)
---------------------------------------------
In France we have an ad free data sheet compendium given for free by
pharmaceutical companies each year. It is a heavy (2000 pages, 21 by
31 cm) list of brand names in alphabetical order with the summary of
products characteristics from the French medicines agency.
We have no rational use of drug formulary produced independently from
industry, updated several times a year and easily portable, like the BNF.
Most of journals are industry sponsored. One exception is la revue
Prescrire and its English speaking edition Prescrire International,
totally ad free and funded by subscribers. The main source of drug
information however is still the industry representative.
La revue Prescrire has showed for 10 years through its reps
monitoring network that information delivered by reps was on the
whole biased and unreliable, which is after all a pragmatic
definition of advertising (La revue Prescrire June issue page
432-433, and translation coming in August issue of Prescrire
International).
Christophe Kopp
editor, Prescrire International
President, International Society of Drug Bulletins
Paris, France
"Christophe Kopp" <Christophe.Kopp@wanadoo.fr>
--
Send mail for the `E-Drug' conference to `e-drug@usa.healthnet.org'.
Mail administrative requests to `majordomo@usa.healthnet.org'.
For additional assistance, send mail to: `owner-e-drug@usa.healthnet.org'.