E-DRUG: Dubious drug promotion in Iceland? (4)
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Dear e-druggers,
I am not a member of e-drug, but two colleagues of mine alerted me to the
discussion on dubious drug promotion in Iceland.
The drug involved in the "dubious drug promotion in Iceland" that Staffan
Svensson is asking about is valsartan (Diovan) and the company is Novartis.
This marketing initiative has been ongoing for several months now, and the
Icelandic authorities have not stopped it. I will not describe in detail how
it was supposed to work, but it raised a number of moral concerns. The
Medicines Control Agency is monitoring the sales of Diovan now, but the
director there apparently does not consider the Agency to have the power to
stop it. According to a letter that the Medicines Control Agency sent to the
Medicinal Product Pricing Committee on the 20th of February (as a response
to a letter from them), the marketing initiative is not a violation of the
law paragraph forbidding direct-to-consumer-advertising (as access to the
product still requires a prescription from a physician), and it is being
monitored whether the marketing initiative could be a violation of the
paragraph encouraging rational use of medicines. According to the letter,
there is nothing, so far, indicating an increase in the sales, and hence
(according to the letter) nothing to indicate that the paragraph about
rational use has been violated.
The Directorate of Health in Iceland wrote a letter to the director of the
company hosting Novartis in Iceland on the 16th of January, with remarks
about the ethical aspect, but did not stop the marketing initiative, because
the Directorate of Health does not have the authority to do so.
This initiative was heavily debated in the Icelandic media approximately 3
months ago, and did not seem to have many defenders.
Best regards
Ingunn Björnsdóttir, PhD
Associate Professor
The Danish University of Pharmaceutical Sciences
Department of Pharmacology and Pharmacotherapy
Section for Social
Pharmacy
Universitetsparken 2
DK 2100 Copenhagen
Denmark
e-mail: ib@dfuni.dk
[This case shows that Big Pharma is turning from influencing physicians to influencing patients. There is little in the IFPMA Code about influencing patients. The closest match I find in the code is something that concerns healthcare professionals only: "Inappropriate financial or material benefits, including inappropriate hospitality, should not be offered to healthcare professionals to influence them in the prescription of pharmaceutical products." SS]