E-drug: Re: BMJ starts drug advertising on website (contd)
----------------------------------------------------------
Dear E druggers
May I suggest a connection between two events.
23 January: the BMJ report on the sacking of Georges Lundberg, editor
of the JAMA, by an executive of the American Medical Association.
This week the BMJ start drug advertising on its website. We have here
the two ends of a spectrum: old style political censorship signalling
clear loss of editorial independence on the one hand, drug ads on the
other, with an obvious risk of editorial bias.
BMJ's naively sophisticated arguments show it has merely endorsed a
market guided strategy. Well,good luck!
A rough marker of editorial loss of independence could be the
ad/subscription ratio of the 'respected' medical journals.
Christophe Kopp
editor
Prescrire International
christophe.kopp@wanadoo.fr
[Note from moderator: Connected or not, both events are definitely another
blow to the freedom of the press! And the idea of the marker is good.
Kirsten Myhr]
--
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'.