Check the evidence before proclaiming a ‘miracle’

Media Release: 1st February 2006

By selling ‘miracle’ products that offer no evidence for their quasi-therapeutic claims, some pharmacies are undermining the very basis for the profession’s trusted position in the Australian community, Pharmaceutical Society of Australia National President Brian Grogan said.

Mr Grogan singled out one such product – Oxygen4Life – as just the latest in a long line of dubious offerings which have attempted to trade off the back of community trust in pharmacists.

“One of the key roles for a pharmacist is to provide advice on medicines and therapeutic goods based on the best available evidence,” Mr Grogan said.

“While those products that lack evidence for effectiveness may not actively harm the physical health of those who take them, they may well be harming patients’ financial health, some of whom may have to forgo other more beneficial evidence-based treatments or other necessities.

“When deciding to block supermarkets from opening in-store pharmacies last year, Health Minister Tony Abbott specifically used the notion of a retailing ‘culture’ as a key reason why supermarkets were unsuitable to sell potentially dangerous medicines.

‘This is exactly why pharmacies should deliberately set out to avoid generating any public perceptions that they are simply another aspect of general retailing.

“PSA is a strong advocate of evidence-based medicine and I would urge the profession to take note of the Society’s Guidelines for Pharmacists’ Relationship with the Pharmaceutical Industry.”

In part, the Guidelines state:

Pharmacists should be especially wary of providing support, either directly or by implication, for therapeutic claims made in relation to health care products that have not been scientifically evaluated in accordance with procedures required for medicines on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods. In such circumstances pharmacists should consider:

• the possibility that a decision to market through pharmacies has been influenced by the credibility that it may bring to those claims; and
• the degree to which the credibility and trust vested in the profession by consumers may be diminished should the claims be disproved.

“I would urge pharmacists to continue to ask to see the evidence before stocking any product making therapeutic claims.”

PSA Members can access the full text of the Guidelines for Pharmacists’ Relationship with the Pharmaceutical Industry in the members’-only section of the PSA web site ­– www.psa.org.au.

The Pharmaceutical Society of Australia is the organisation that represents the professional interests of Australia’s 16,000 pharmacists. It provides standards of practice, education, training and practice support for pharmacists and helps members of the profession to deliver the best health care to their patients.

Contact:

PSA National President Brian Grogan
Mobile: 0419 109 634

or

Aaron Hall
PSA Public Affairs
(02) 6283 4782