Why do people laugh at creationists? (part 22)

Here are my brief thoughts on the possible increase in the use of prescribing pharmacists in primary care in the UK.

According to the Charity Commission, The National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society (NRAS) received 120,695 in corporate donations last year. Although the accounts do not break down to an individual company’s donations, the NRAS do thank their corporate donors on their website. These donors include a number of drug companies, one being Bristol Myers Squibb.

Today NICE ruled that abatacept was not good value for money. The NRAS, had their appeal rejected, describing the decision as “short sighted and perverse”. Abatacept is produced by Bristol Myers Squibb.

If I was to write an opinion about abatacept in a scientific journal, I would have to declare any conflicts of interest. Donations from Bristol Myers Squibb would be a clear conflict of interest. Shouldn’t the NRAS also be portrayed as having a conflict of interest?

The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry’s [ABPI] see groups like the NRAS as a resource to be exploited.

‘The ABPI was now […] enlisting patient support groups as part of the Informed Patient Initiative campaign. Patient organisations, with their own clinical advisers, were already starting to fight their cause for access to drug information. “Patient groups offer us a big opportunity to provide them with authoritative information for them to use objectively in a way that benefits their members,” he said.’

Or as Andrew Herxheimer suggests in the BMJ:

Most patients’ organisations are poor and have little independent funding. Grants from and joint projects with pharmaceutical companies can help them grow and be more influential, but can also distort and misrepresent their agendas. Relationships must therefore be fully acknowledged and open, without public relations flummery.

I currently have a large reference database (with associated PDFs) running on Endnote 9.0 on my Macbook, which integrates nicely with Word 2004. I have the disc for Word 2008, but am holding off installing it, because it does not operate even with the most recent version of Endnote. Neither does it work with Pages. I’m considering switching to Bookends, which works with both Word 2008 and Pages, although I am concerned about the ability of the software to import my Endnote database and keep the associated pdfs linked to the records.

As a further complication, I also work at two other locations, and it would be useful to have the same database available at each. Currently, both of these are Windows machines. Ideally, I planned to have the Macbook acting as my central database, and then a periodic intervals update the other two sites to match the Macbook database. The databases would be used independently for the purposes of referencing. Currently, I can’t do this as an export from the Mac Endnote 9.0 just won’t go into either the Windows Endnote at one site, or the Reference Manager 10 at the other site. I’d be interested to see if Bookends would be better in this respect.

Any advice on the bext way forward?

Led and co-ordinated by the WHO Regional Office for Europe, European Immunisation Week aims to promote immunisation through targeted advocacy and communication, and the immunisation of high-risk groups.

The NHS is holding a conference today about raising vaccine uptake in London, a particularly hard hit area, and have a rather good little advert about vaccination you may have seen on the telly.

A good overview of the problem of measles in Europe is presented here. Britain came second in reported incidence, after Switzerland who have their own problems. The colour-coded map tells the story.