Six companies found to have seriously breached ABPI code of practice
Promotional activities by six companies have been ruled by the Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority to have broken the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry code of practice. The breaches are considered so serious that they have brought discredit on the pharmaceutical industry (see advertisement, ppA8-9).
Sanofi-Aventis and Procter & Gamble were ruled to have broken the
ABPI’s 2003 code of practice by linking the provision of a joint
nurse audit programme for medical practices with the doctors’ agreement
to use Actonel (risedronate sodium) as first-line treatment for osteoporosis.
As a result of a second complaint concerning an insert about statins
in The Pharmaceutical Journal, AstraZeneca was ruled to have broken the
ABPI code. In addition, the company was found to have broken the code
in respect of a document it had produced that claimed to set out a primary
care trust’s prescribing guidelines for statins.
Takeda was ruled to have brought discredit on the industry by using a
mailing that contained misleading information and continuing to use it
after the company had been told that it was misleading.
Pfizer was found to have discredited the industry by producing pads of
letters to be used by smoking cessation advisers to refer patients to
GPs. The letters implied that the GPs role was merely to rubber-stamp
a predetermined prescribing decision and promoted the prescription medicine
Champix (varenicline) to patients.
In a second case involving Procter & Gamble, the company was ruled
to have discredited the industry after placing an advertisement for Intrinsa
(testosterone transdermal patch) in a magazine intended for the public.
Eli Lilly discredited the industry because a company representative had
implied to a consultant physician that Lilly’s funding of an educational
post would continue only if greater quantities of Lilly insulins were
prescribed.
The current version of the ABPI code of practice came into force in 2006.
However, changes to international codes of practice for the pharmaceutical
industry mean that the ABPI code needs to be updated. A revised code
has to be implemented by 1 July 2008.
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