Charles Medawar, SocialAudit, views on the Pharmas

The article "Depressing Stories about Pharmaceutical Control " has Charles Medawar views on many questions and I've took some of them:

"In questioning the adequacy of the official action taken so far, he raises basic questions about the competency of drug regulators and the lack of transparency in tackling user dependency and complaints in many countries."

"Part of this new and imperative emphasis on marketing involves relentless demonstrations of the triumph of benefit compared with risk, and the promotion of drugs for much more than they are worth. In this case, it also meant that the Pharmas tackled problems by challenging perceptions of risk and by ignoring or denying evidence of harm. In so doing, they systematically exploited the dependencies of governments and the medical establishment. There was little resistance, partly because the Pharmas were also dependent on them. Commercial sponsorship both sustained and undermined the reputation and independence of political, professional and academic institutions, drug regulatory systems, even patient organizations and the World Health Organization."

"But on the negative side, Pharmas were becoming expert at the subversion and manipulation of patients' views, by buying their way into patient organizations and other similar devices. As a result, patients' views "were increasingly orchestrated by marketing departments, public relations agencies and Pharma-sponsored patient organizations."

"But above all, Medawar suggests that the underlying policy objectives for pharmaceuticals are ill-founded. The main impetus for the recent EU changes in its pharmaceutical rules was the concern that the Pharmas were migrating to the US because the US was doing "better" than Europe; but, says Medawar, the perception was based on the assumption that drug innovation was what really mattered, and that quality of innovation could be measured just by the economic returns."