Curbing the Influence of the Drug Industry: A British View

September 2005 | Volume 2 | Issue 9 | e241 Britain’s House of Commons Health Committee has recently recommended a fundamental realignment of the relationships between the pharmaceutical industry and government, regulators, doctors, the health service, and patients [1]. The committee said that the industry has interdigitated itself into every aspect of health care, and that government and others, including doctors, have taken the easy route of assuming that the interests of the industry and of the health services and patients are the same. The committee’s report makes clear that reducing the infl uence of the industry would be good for everybody, including—paradoxically—the industry itself, which could concentrate on developing new drugs rather than on corrupting doctors, patient organisations, and others. “It is not in the long term interests of the industry for prescribers and the public to lose faith in it,” says the report. “We need an industry which is led by the values of its scientists not those of its marketing force.”