Pharmacists can evaluate information effectively, MPs told
Pharmacists are well placed to judge whether or not medicines information is fair and balanced or biased, a parliamentary committee inquiring into the influence
of the pharmaceutical industry has been told.
Giving evidence to the House of Commons Health Select Committee on 11
November, John D’Arcy, chief executive of the National Pharmaceutical
Association, told the committee: “Pharmacists will make their own
judgement on materials. The experience we have is that because they are
clinicians with expertise in the actual use of medicines pharmacists
can very readily see what is credible, objective information and differentiate
that from what you might call company propaganda.” He added that
the NPA worked with manufacturers to help them produce objective information.
Mr D’Arcy also referred to pharmacists’ critical evaluation
skills to rebut an implication from Jon Owen Jones (Lab/Co-op, Cardiff
Central) that community pharmacists might be prepared to sell medicines
that do no good. “Pharmacists are critical evaluators of medicines,” Mr
D’Arcy said. “In something like 25 per cent of cases pharmacists
do not recommend any product at all. My view would be that we can rely
upon pharmacists, and indeed it would be part of their professional duty,
if they do provide a medicine, to provide only those medicines that work.
… Pharmacists do not operate particularly commercially in that respect.”
Rob Darracott, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s director of corporate
and strategic development, told the committee that the Society had a
particular concern about disease awareness campaigns for conditions where
only one, new, product was available.
He went on: “We also have a particular concern, looking at the
American experience, that disease awareness campaigns were the precursors
of direct-to-consumer advertising. And we have great concerns about
direct-to-consumer advertising.” |
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