Drug company promotion negatively affects how doctors prescribe: Insights from a new Cochrane review

By Joel Lexchin, Associate professor, Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto; York University, Canada; University of Sydney
Alice Fabbri, Honorary Research Fellow, University of Bath
Barbara Mintzes, Professor in Pharmaceutical Policy, School of Pharmacy and Charles Perkins Centre, University of Sydney
Quinn Grundy, Associate Professor, Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, University of Toronto

When you seek medical care, you hope that your doctor will present you with treatment options that are proven to be effective for your condition, that harms do not outweigh benefits and that recommended treatments are affordable and account for your personal situation.

But if your doctor has been influenced by messages, payments or gifts from drug companies, that is unlikely to be the case, as our team from Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States found.

Pharmaceutical industry promotion is a global phenomenon. In the mid 2010s, companies in the U.S.…

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