Desperately hunting Madonna

Its ethics questioned, GSK to scrap individual sales targetsLONDON -- British drug company GlaxoSmithKline says it will stop paying doctors to promote its products at speaking engagements and scrap individual sales targets, months after its ethics were challenged by a bribery scandal in China.The group last week announced sweeping changes to its marketing practices, which also included a halt to direct financial support to health care professionals to attend medical conferences. But it left open the possibility of funding through grants."It is patients' interests that always come first," Andrew Witty, the company's chief executive, insisted Tuesday. "We recognize that we have an important role to play in providing doctors with information about our medicines, but this must be done clearly, transparently and without any perception of conflict of interest."GSK is influential in big pharma, the world's sixth-largest drugs company in terms of global sales. Its major products include the asthma drug Advair and the prostate drug Avodart.It follows another drug company, AstraZeneca, in tightening its practices on conferences. In 2011, AstraZeneca decided that it would offer support for a medical professional to attend a conference only in limited circumstances, with the specific aim of contributing to high-quality scientific discourse.GSK insists that the changes were unrelated to the scandal, but they come as it tries to distance itself from the troubles engulfing its operations in...
Source: PharmaGossip - Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: Source Type: blogs