The Food and Drug Administration is proposing to allow
pharmaceutical companies to contradict official safety warnings in sales
presentations to customers.
While an FDA warning about a drug’s
dangers can scare off buyers, the new proposal would allow the companies
to present customers with information that undermines official warnings
as long as it comes from a peer-reviewed journal article.
The
proposal is supported by pharmaceutical manufacturers, who argue that
the policy would allow them to give doctors and hospitals the benefits
of the latest research.
But the proposal is drawing an avalanche
of criticism from public health advocates who argue that because
individual studies can differ widely in their results, a drug company
could easily mislead customers, and possibly endanger patients by
presenting only a selection of new research.
The proposal
“seriously undermines FDA authority,” Sidney Wolfe, founder of Public
Citizen’s Health Research Group wrote Wednesday to the agency. “Its main
supporters are drug companies and their associations, all of which
would benefit from being allowed and encouraged to sell more drugs by
making them seem safer than FDA has judged them to be.”
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