Which comes first, patients or profits?

Pharmaceutical companies are causing biased information to be given to doctors about the efficacy of drugs, causing an epidemic of misinformed practitioners that is costing hundreds of thousands of lives, reported The Independent

Speaking to the newspaper, Aseem Malhotra, an NHS cardiologist and a trustee of the King’s Fund health think tank, claims there is “a systemic lack of transparency in the information being given to doctors to prescribe medication, in terms of the benefits of drugs being grossly exaggerated and their side effects under reported in studies”.

Criticism of the pharma industry comes from companies funding studies and drug trials for their own products.

Malhotra said to The Independent that the prevalence of pharmaceutical companies, which are “profit making businesses” being able to fund studies causes biased information to be recorded and reported on in medical journals.

This is in turn “creating an epidemic of misinformed doctors,” he said, stressing that the heart of the issue is “corporate interest trumping patient interest”.

The Independent reported that Peter Gotze, professor of research design at the University of Copenhagen, has evidence to suggest that prescribed drugs are the third biggest killer behind heart disease and cancer, with particular concern placed on the effects of psychotropic drugs used to treat dementia, among others illnesses.

The main issue that the newspaper reports is that the side effects of the drugs that undergo company-funded trials are downplayed.

Adverse side effects such as dizziness, which can cause the elderly to fall, are not being highlighted well enough. The number of over 75s being admitted to hospital due to adverse drug reactions is one in three, and a quarter of these patients will die as a result of these injuries, according to Malhotra.

“Institutions such as universities, medical journals and doctors collude wittingly or unwittingly with the medical industry for financial gain,” Malhotra said to The Independent.

However, a spokesperson for the Association of the British Pharmaceutical industry said: “All medicines undergo rigorous testing for quality, safety and efficacy by global regulators, including the MHRA in the UK.  

“The data is also subject to continuous scrutiny during trials, once licensed and throughout the life of the medicine, even after a patent has expired. 

The spokesperson added that the “suggestion that prescription drugs are the third leading cause of death after cancer and heart disease is misleading and is certainly not a statistic recognised by either the World Health Organisation nor the Office for National Statistics in the UK”.