Vertrauen in Marken in der heutigen Gesellschaft - Qualität und Wert moderner Medikamente

Eine der zentralen Feststellungen dieses Berichts besteht darin, dass es einen echten und dringenden Bedarf gibt, das Vertrauen der Bürger in Arzneimittel zu stärken. Arzneimittel seien äußerst sicher und vorteilhaft für die Gesundheitsfürsorge. 

Executive Summary (a word for word copy from the report)

• The research-based pharmaceutical industry has achieved and is achieving what would once have been regarded as miracles. It has created new branded products that cure or alleviate sickness and that have extended both the length and quality of life.
• At every stage of their development, medicines are subject to a series of stringent tests and regulations to demonstrate their safety, efficacy and quality. Even after a medicine has been licensed, it remains subject to close scrutiny and post-marketing surveillance procedures to identify quickly any unforeseen side-effects.
• Yet today, consumers too often lack public trust and confidence in these products. Unduly alarmed by unscrupulous media hype and political scare mongering, society now faces the prospect of having personal and public healthcare unnecessarily undermined by an on-going series of moral panics and counter-productive scares.
• Today, there is a real and urgent need to rebuild trust between people and the medicines they use.
• At a time when – in reality – medicines are highly safe and hugely beneficial to personal and public healthcare, people are unnecessarily fearful.
• Fuelled by populist tales of pharmaceutical companies engaging in ‘excessive profiteering’, the production of ‘dangerous products’ and generally ‘unethical behaviour’, much criticism of the research-based pharmaceutical industry seems to proceed from a general and, in our view, inappropriate hostility to private business and a lack of understanding about the industry.
• Yet, given the demonstrable value and quality of today’s medicines, the fact that consumers unnecessarily lack trust and confidence in them raises serious and profound challenges for us all – as well as potential dangers to people’s own health.
• The authors of this paper believe that people should be encouraged to better understand the real benefits of the research-based industry and the medicines they produce. To give people a more truthful and objective understanding of the products available, their trust and confidence should be re-built via an active agenda of education and open communication. 5
• Today, government, industry, patient groups, journalists and medical professionals should rise to the challenge of trust and actively encourage better education: 
• • On the processes of how innovative medicines are brought to market. 
  • So that people can understand the regulations and the markers of quality already in place for medicines. 
  • To actively engage medical professionals, patient groups, the public and pharmaceutical companies in a positive and more open dialogue appropriate for the twenty first century. 
• Overall, the present regulatory framework is sound and ensures that new products are as safe as they can humanly be when introduced to the market. At every stage of the process, the burden of proof is solidly on the manufacturer to demonstrate that a product meets high standards of safety, quality and efficacy. If this cannot be shown beyond reasonable doubt, the medicine cannot be marketed to prescribers. 
• Today, the level of regulation governing the development, testing, manufacture and supply of pharmaceutical products is already large and growing. 
• Nevertheless, because we have an increasingly complex and dynamic pharmaceutical market, this regulatory framework should be adjusted so that it empowers pharmaceutical companies to speak directly with ordinary people, and so that ordinary people can tell the companies and each other about the medicines they want. 
• However, this is not an argument for a completely unregulated market in pharmaceuticals and information. There is no public demand for that. Instead, what is suggested is that the present dialogue between medical professionals, patient groups, the general public, regulators and the pharmaceutical companies should be made less exclusive. It should cease to be a dialogue and widened into an informed discussion between the professionals and the companies – plus intermediaries trusted by the public and by ordinary people themselves. There may well be limits to what ordinary people can decide for themselves. Undoubtedly, though, ordinary people can be trusted to know, to exchange, and to decide more than is presently allowed.

The report by Dr. Tim Evans, Dr. Sean Gabb, Alberto Mingardi and Stephen Pollard can be downloaded from the CNE website.

The Centre for the New Europe (CNE) is a Brussels-based free market think tank.