# \[e-drug\] Role and function of E-drug **URL:** \ **Category:** e-drug\ **Created:** [September 10, 2001, 8:28pm UTC](https://talk.edrugplus.org/t/e-drug-role-and-function-of-e-drug/12379 "2001-09-10T20:28:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![jwfvmil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/df705f/32.png) [@jwfvmil](https://talk.edrugplus.org/u/jwfvmil)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2001, 8:28pm UTC](https://talk.edrugplus.org/t/e-drug-role-and-function-of-e-drug/12379/1 "2001-09-10T20:28:30Z")
E-drug: Role and function of E-drug ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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] -- Send mail for the `E-Drug' conference to `e-drug@usa.healthnet.org'. Information and archive [http://satellife.healthnet.org/programs/edrug.html](http://satellife.healthnet.org/programs/edrug.html) Mail administrative requests to `majordomo@usa.healthnet.org'. For additional assistance, send mail to: `owner-e-drug@usa.healthnet.org'.