Medical speech: censoring drug information.

• Author: Bailey, Ronald
• Position: Pharmaceutical companies' medical journal articles - Brief article

MORE THAN a decade ago, Congress allowed pharmaceutical companies to distribute peer-reviewed medical journal articles to physicians describing alternative, "off-label" uses of federally approved drugs. Currently the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has to approve these reprints before they are circulated. But as the i997 law authorizing the reprints expires, the FDA is mulling a plan to drop the approval requirement altogether, allowing companies to disseminate unabridged reprints of "truthful and non-misleading" medical journal articles more easily.

Apparently operating on the assumption that patients are best served when doctors are unaware of the latest medical information, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) says the proposal "would open the door to abusive marketing practices...