E-drug: Role and function of E-drug
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Dear All,
With most ongoing projects, at a certain point there is always
someone coming in and asking what is going on. I would like to
come in right now, and ask the same question.
When I subscribed to E-drug it was a practical list, with occasional
political opinions, but mostly aimed at improving drug use in
developing (and sometimes developed) countries.
Although probably also important, the list now contains in my
opinion, too many newspaper articles on the politics around the
availability of drugs and especially the American opinions and
attitudes in the field of the doings of the pharmaceutical industry
(lots of Washington Post).
I am not sure if this is what the readers expect and would like. For
me, there might be a role for a separate list on which to find all the
press clippings, but I would argue in favour of E-drug being more
practical than it currently is and concentrate on optimizing drug
treatment, pharmaco-epidemiology, drug supply and essential drugs
discussions, and not to accept reprints of popular newspapers
articles.
Best regards,
Foppe
Foppe van Mil, PhD, Pharm D.
Pharmacy practice consultant
Margrietlaan 1, NL 9471 CT Zuidlaren, The Netherlands
Tel: +31 50 4094333. Fax +31 50 4090732
e-mail: jwfvmil@wxs.nl
[Thanks Foppe for bringing this up. We as E-drug moderators ask
ourselves regularly whether the content of E-drug is what E-
druggers expect from it. But as it happens, the majority tends to be
silent and we may have come to believe that what we do is good.
Only rarely we receive such frank comments as yours, making us
think whether E-drug really is what it should be.
For your information, most newspaper and journal articles are
posted on E-drug by the moderators, as a service to subscribers.
So, we as moderators take most responsibility of selecting the
items mentioned by you, as we consider them important for drug
access in developing countries. I am not so sure that these articles
present typical American views on intellectual property rights and
access to drugs.
E-drug has some 1650 subscribers now. Not bad, but the group is
very diverse, with many pharmacists, but also researches, health
activists, drug use interventionists, employees of international
agencies and pharmaceutical industry, etc. In short, it is hard and
maybe even impossible to have the ideal content for all. I do share
your view that issues of improving drug use are nowadays little
discussed in E-drug, although I have to say that the response on
several drug use related messages that I posted on E-drug drew
hardly any response.
What I would want to ask E-druggers is to react on Foppe's
message and let us know what you think about the contents of E-
drug. The more response we get, the better it is. I would like to ask
especially E-druggers' opinion on the proposal not to publish
newspaper clippings or journal articles anymore; a rather drastic
measure...
One more thing, Healthnet is currently working on an improved E-
drug website, in which it will be possible to publish larger
documents or articles from other sources. More information will be
provided later. Hilbrand Haak, E-drug co-moderator]
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