The Pharmaceutical Industry

There are legal pharmaceuticals and illegal pharmaceuticals. Governments spend billions on suppressing the latter and make matters worse. Some people think that the government interference creates the problems but that is a question for another essay.

Legal pharmaceutical outfits are in business and making a profit is a legitimate concern. Advertising is part of their approach. This is perfectly reasonable especially given the expense of research and the expense of the testing that  governments demand. Medical journals are one vehicle for pushing drugs and should have a responsible attitude to what they advertise. But they are also in business to make profits. This does not always go well with the idea of advertising the best products rather than the also rans, the shoddy, the expensive and the worthless.

The British Medical Journal is out there on line and carrying Google ads. One is for Angioprim. See under.  The BMA does not bother to warn medics that it advertising rubbish.

Angioprim       
A web site at yourticker.com advertises muck called Angioprim which descales arteries, cleans swimming pools and is the subject of a health warning from the FDA. See FDA Warning Letters. It is a warning to the comedian flogging this stuff that he is trying it on and play by the rules or else.

Richard Smith writing for  PLOSjournal tells that it is dodgy trials rather than dodgy advertising is the big issue. Organizing the goal posts is that much easier.

 

Drugs
Are very awful according to various special interest groups.

 

Pharmaceutical Fraud
Happens. Too much money rides on the whole thing for it to be any other way.

 

Is there a better  approach to selecting the best products? Perhaps not. Government meddling would undoubtedly give us a bureaucracy with an agenda,  a multimegabuck budget and a very slick publicity machine to do its cover ups. A large organization with purchasing power and an interest in being cost effective should be better but it definitely is not the NHS. Somewhat thus wrote M.D. in Private Eye 1140/10