E-drug: Australian PBAC: more trouble (2) (cont)
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This article from the SMH provides a good overview of the situation.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0102/02/pageone/pageone3.html
Ken
Dr. Ken Harvey, Senior Lecturer, School of Public Health,
Room 221, Building HS1 (NW9),
La Trobe University, Bundoora, 3086, Australia,
Telephone +61 3 9479 5773,
Facsimile +61 3 9479 1783,
Personal mobile 0419 181910,
"Ken Harvey" <k.harvey@latrobe.edu.au>
Internet: http://www-sph.health.latrobe.edu.au/kharvey/
Wooldridge accused as drug revolt grows
By Mike Seccombe
Sydney Morning Herald
February 2, 2001
Reprinted under the fair use doctrine
of international copyright law:
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html
The Federal Health Minister, Dr Wooldridge, was accused last night of
emasculating the body which regulates the prices paid by consumers
for many common drugs, by appointing a former drug industry lobbyist
to it. Three senior members of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory
Committee, including its chairman, have refused to serve with the
industry lobbyist Mr Pat Clear and major medical organisations have
condemned his appointment as involving a massive conflict of
interest.
The 12-member committee decides which medicines should be subsidised
by the Government under its $3.2 billion Pharmaceutical Benefits
Scheme, ensuring prices to patients are kept low and drugs of dubious
merit are not subsidised. Its operations are an irritant to
pharmaceutical companies, because they can depress prices for their
products.
The appointment of Mr Clear, former head of the drug industry lobby
group the Australian Pharmaceutical Manufacturers' Association, and a
former senior executive with Wellcome pharmaceuticals, is seen within
the medical community as evidence of the Government buckling to the
interests of multinational drug companies. Opposition to Mr Clear's
appointment resulted in Dr Wooldridge announcing only 10 of the 12
positions yesterday. Desperate last-minute attempts to fill the two
final positions were met with refusals by a number of qualified
experts. As a result of the conflict, the committee is left with
only two members who have any experience in the complicated process
of assessing pharmaceuticals.
Last night, the former chairman of the committee, Professor Don
Birkett, said the appointment of Mr Clear was "totally inexplicable,
except in terms of pressure from the multinational drug companies".
Professor Birkett noted that several former staff of Dr Wooldridge
now worked with the most trenchant of the committee's opponents, the
giant Pfizer company, and that a former senior member of the Industry
Minister, Senator Minchin's department now headed the industry lobby.
"This has been a very well co-ordinated campaign," Professor Birkett
said. "As a result, the committee now will lack both technical
familiarity and corporate memory."
The Federal president of the Australian Medical Association, Dr
Kerryn Phelps, condemned Mr Clear's appointment, saying the advisory
committee was "no place for a professional lobbyist for the drug
companies". "The Australian public deserves a committee entirely
independent and objective, and seen to be so, and not subject to
commercial objectives."
But Dr Wooldridge said it was "entirely appropriate for a person with
previous industry experience to be a member of this committee". He
denied Mr Clear would have any conflict of interest, having retired
from active involvement in the industry. Yet Dr Wooldridge's own
parliamentary secretary, Senator Grant Tambling, last year chaired a
review of the PBS, whose final report said the appointment of a drug
industry representative to the committee could present "an untenable
conflict of interest". This was because the drug companies would
have "a strong financial interest in obtaining a particular outcome
(ie achieving PBS listing)".
Established in 1954, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee
advises Federal Government which drugs to subsidise. The Scheme
costs more than $3.8 billion a year. In December, the committee
recommended drugs for osteoporosis, breast cancer, hypertension,
cancer, dry eyes, Alzheimer's disease, blood clots, muscle spasm,
anaemia, depression, epilepsy and reflux.
Viagra, the anti-impotence drug, and Naltrexone, to treat heroin
addicts, were both controversially rejected from the PBS last year.
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