Drug company sponsored symposia fulfil an important educational role

To the Editor: I am critical of the article by Tattersall and Kerridge.1 In my opinion, the article comprises a series of pompous announcements from an ivory tower, which hint without actually saying that doctors who attend educational symposia organised by pharmaceutical companies, and who subsequently order the product, are acting improperly. As I see them, the facts are quite otherwise.

Medical practitioners have an obligation to do their best for their patients by giving them the most appropriate treatment available, and to keep up to date with their profession. Both these objectives can be achieved by educational symposia organised by the research-based pharmaceutical companies, which introduce new concepts in medicine as well as new products.

Research-based pharmaceutical companies play a major role in the development of modern therapeutics through the introduction of new drugs. The development and manufacture in commercial quantities of life-saving compounds in the future, such as, for instance, the new biological agents and the new anticancer drugs that we need so urgently, would not be possible but for the pharmaceutical industry. One cannot imagine this important work being done by other agencies, such as the universities or the government. The Australian Government, in fact, sold its own pharmaceutical company (Commonwealth Serum Laboratories, now CSL Ltd) some years ago. Doctors attend educational symposia run by pharmaceutical companies so as to obtain information that will be useful for their patients, not because they can get a few free drinks and a dinner. The suggestion to this effect is offensive.

I note that one of the authors is Director of the Centre for Values, Ethics and the Law in Medicine. I would value his opinion on doctors who advertise directly to the public, such as the eye surgeons who advertise repeatedly on talkback radio, and the promoters of alarming cardiovascular articles that predict catastrophes if one does not apply to the sponsors of the program. To criticise doctors for prescribing products promoted at educational symposia while allowing these other examples to flourish without criticism is, to my mind, hypocritical.