368 



Under such auspices [he went on] the endorsement of inferior products that 

 are not in the best interest of the public, is much less likely to occur than when 

 the support for testing the product is furnished by the individual producer. 



Some mandatory legislation or regulation would be required in order to get 

 the products tested in this unbiased manner before approval, licensing, or certi- 

 fication. This would, of course, also include some safeguards for the interest 

 of the inventor or producer and would not preclude arrangements privately 

 made by the manufacturers with other groups. The same panels or similar ones 

 set up to deal with different classes of drugs could also serve in an advisory 

 capacity to the Food and Drug Administration for the licensing, certification 

 and release of new pharmaceutical products."" 



It was necessan^ to liave both testing and evaluation of tests per- 

 formed by a group that had no personal interest in the drug.^'^ A 

 weighty responsibility rested on those who evaluated test results be- 

 cause the judgment factor was paramount. He said : "Now you can 

 give a drug to a lot of people, and get a lot of testimonials about its 

 being of value, and never learn whether it is of value or is dangerous 

 until it is examined by people who have competence in evaluating it, 

 and this is the big difficulty." " Information provided by drug manu- 

 facturers was not all of uniformly high quality, although it was an 

 important factor in determining which drugs were prescribed : 



Dr. Finland. There can be no doubt that the representatives of the phar- 

 maceutical companies have a great deal of influence on the prescription of drugs. 

 And I think also that there cannot be any doubt that the quality of informa- 

 tion that is given by different drug houses varies with the quality of the per- 

 sonnel in that drug house, and also with the integrity of the individuals in these 

 drug houses. 28 



Senate conclusions of drug investigation 



The final report of the long investigation into administered prices 

 in the drug industry. May 8, 1961, centered on economic aspects. How- 

 ever, the minority — while disagreeing generally with the economic 

 findings and conclusions of the report — took particular exception to 

 the consideration and findings of medical and pharmacological as- 

 pects, as being beyond the scope and competence of the subcommittee 

 and its staff (p. 362). Medical aspects were dealt with mainly in the 

 discussion of "Advertising and Promotion" (pp. 155-222) and "Ge- 

 neric Names versus Trade Names" (pp. 223-253) . 



In the opinion of the majority of the subcommittee, the advertising 

 and promotion aspects of the drug industry had contributed to a num- 

 ber of conditions the subconnnittee judged to be inconsistent with the 

 public interest which the drug industry was exiDccted to serve. These 

 disadvantages were : the advertising was costly, voluminous, unreliable 

 (p. 165, sq.) , time-consuming, encouraged the use of useless drugs, in- 

 volved "seeding" (defined, pp. 176-177, as placing a drug with a medi- 

 cal center or influential physician before general release to establish 

 the name and ability of the drug early), shotgun therapy (the use of 

 drug mixtures), the misuse and overuse of drugs, the insistence of 

 patients on inappropriate medication (pp. 183-184), the release of 

 drugs inadequately tested or tested by unqualified personnel (pp. 187- 

 190), and the subservience of "some medical journals" to the drug in- 

 dustry (pp. 180-181). 



Two minority statements were included in the report, one by Sena- 

 tors Dirksen and Hruska, and the other by Senator Wiley. They ob- 



=5 Ibid., p. 13933. 

 =" Ibid., p. 139.34. 

 ='Ibid., p. 1.3943. 

 28 Ibid., p. 13944. 



