ha see they do get influenced, even if its very subtly...... now the problem i have now is is it the self-regulation of pharmaceutical companies fault or is it the fault that there isnt enough regulation?.......... thats the thing thats confusing me............
Well my personal opinion below:
Well, there are 2 factors in this issue, one of which you have eluded to. Yes, I do personally think there's a problem of how pharmaceutical companies are regulated (that said, we do better than the US, where drugs are marketed direct to the public. That's illegal in Australia). We need a way of acknowledging the fact whilst pharmaceutical companies can be a important source of information, they can often be a biased source of information. In terms of regulation, some of the regulation I can think of includes
- Regulating the content of information that pharmaceutical companies give out to doctor by forcing drug representatives to submit their advertisement to some sort of independent authority (say the TGA).
- Preventing direct-to-public drug advertisement (already happens here, needs to happen in the states)
- Some sort of acknowledgement that pharmaceutical-type companies, whist that they do need to make a profit, that they need to regard themselves as accountable to the wider community, not just their shareholders. People before profit, so to speak.
A lot of this goes into the broader sphere of what sort of ethical responsibility do pharmaceutical companies have to the wider community.
The other major factor is the doctors themselves. There's a lack of acknowledgement from doctors in regards their vulnerability to this sort of thing. This needs to be stopped. After all, if there is no demand, there won't be a supply either. For example there shouldn't be any advertisement in medical journals from pharmaceutical companies. Another example is prevent the 'ghost writing' of journal articles. That is, senior scientists and doctor putting their names onto article that are practically written by pharmaceutical companies.