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New centre for Chinese medicine in Vienna
New centre for Chinese medicine in Vienna t Europe’s first international conference on traditional Chinese medicine, held in Vienna last week, Cui Yongqiang of Guanganmen Hospital, Beijing, said would determine the acceptance of Chinese medicine in Europe. “The organisations will find they can save money in dealing with some chronic conditions”, he said. Comparing traditional Chinese and “western” medication for certain gastrointestinal disorders and bronchitis, Cui Yongqiang said experience in China showed that traditional medicine can achieve similar results at a fifth of the cost. But he pointed out that western methods were indispensable in serious conditions. Andreas Beyer, an Austrian practitioner in both western medicine and traditional Chinese medicine and head of the Austrian Traditional Chinese Medicine Society, called for an improvement in the skills of traditional practitioners, including those who are qualified in western methods. He said amateur acupuncture carried such dangers as vagal stimulation in cardiac patients. Beyer said a traditional Chinese medicine university with links to institutions in China and America will be founded in Austria. Vienna Health Authority is to send a team to China next year to evaluate traditional medicine. In an attempt to come to terms with the dichotomy of western and traditional Chinese traditions, the team will include one of Austria’s foremost philosophers.
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Nigel Glass
Spain investigates “bribery” of doctors involved use of a series of “pharmacopain’s Minister of Health José logical protocols” that were drawn up Manuel Romay-Beccaría went to together with the doctors. The protoparliament on Oct 20 to deny that cols, Fernández-García stated, were drug companies are “buying doctors” made up individual notebooks that in order to influence prescribing contained patients’ patterns. His denial details and the treatwas in response ment suggested. to questions raised Surprisingly, by spokeswoman Fernández-García, for the left-wing who had worked in Izquierda Unida Abbott for more party’s health comthan 20 years, has mission, Angeles gained the political Maestro. She had support of the asked RomayIzquierda Unida Beccaría to investiparty. Maestro has gate whether said that her party’s doctors are being health commission subjected to “prewill represent the sumably illegal pres- Prescribing for sale? public in Fernándezsures” by the drug García’s lawsuit. Abbott representaindustry. tives were unable to comment. These events follow revelations The questions in parliament highmade by José Luis Fernández-García, light the gravity of the allegations the former manager of Abbott which “affect current pharmaceutical Laboratories in Spain. In December spending since cheap drugs are being last year, Fernández-García started substituted by very expensive ones legal action against the company, in with the same therapeutic function”, which Abbott is accused of bribing said Maestro. She added that “everydoctors. According to Fernándezbody knows the methods employed García, each year the company by drug companies to guarantee proddevotes the equivalent of US$ 2.7 ucts sales in the health service”. million to pay doctors in the state-run Profit-sharing between doctors and health service to prescribe certain pharmaceutical companies has been drugs such as Ginecrin and Procrin widely suspected in Spain in the past. (leuprorelin). Nevertheless, Romay-Beccaría Fernández-García, who has delivstated that, apart from some “excepered about 100 compromising docutional situations”, health professionals ments to the judicial authorities, and pharmaceutical companies “operstated in the lawsuit that Abbott ate at present with respect to existing instructed area managers and visitors rules and ethics codes”. (or agents) to “buy” doctors with gifts, trips, and cash. He said that the bribery mechanism Xavier Bosch
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Critics force Canada’s food-safety law to stall
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he Canadian government has decided to put its controversial new food-safety legislation on hold in the wake of a host of criticisms. Opponents said the plans to change regulation of food safety and of genetically modified foods would put the public at serious risk. Agriculture Minister Lyle Vanclief sounded the partial retreat on Oct 20, announcing that the bill will be withdrawn until further consultations are held to clarify public misconceptions. “There are a number of people and organisations that raised concerns, who said they didn’t clearly understand what C-80 [the legislation] did and says, so we
THE LANCET • Vol 354 • October 30, 1999
thought it was the appropriate thing to do to have further consultation with them”, Vanclief told reporters. Among the groups to be consulted are 200 federal employees who last week issued a petition claiming that C-80 would transfer responsibility for food safety from the health to the agriculture department, which is responsible for promoting the economic interests of the food-processing industry. Failure to withdraw the legislation—which Health Minister Allan Rock insisted did not diminish his department’s responsibility for food safety—would be “disastrous to the health of infants, children and adults, as well as to
Canadian food producers and manufacturers”, the petition stated. Also weighing into the debate was the UK’s John Verrall, a pharmaceutical chemist with the Food Ethics Council, an independent body funded by the UK Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, who told a press conference that Canada should learn from the regulatory mistakes the UK made which contributed to mad cow disease. “All I say to you today is don’t adopt the very system which has proved so inadequate to us, which I’m sure is a recipe for disaster.” Wayne Kondro
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Nigel Glass
Spain investigates “bribery” of doctors involved use of a series of “pharmacopain’s Minister of Health José logical protocols” that were drawn up Manuel Romay-Beccaría went to together with the doctors. The protoparliament on Oct 20 to deny that cols, Fernández-García stated, were drug companies are “buying doctors” made up individual notebooks that in order to influence prescribing contained patients’ patterns. His denial details and the treatwas in response ment suggested. to questions raised Surprisingly, by spokeswoman Fernández-García, for the left-wing who had worked in Izquierda Unida Abbott for more party’s health comthan 20 years, has mission, Angeles gained the political Maestro. She had support of the asked RomayIzquierda Unida Beccaría to investiparty. Maestro has gate whether said that her party’s doctors are being health commission subjected to “prewill represent the sumably illegal pres- Prescribing for sale? public in Fernándezsures” by the drug García’s lawsuit. Abbott representaindustry. tives were unable to comment. These events follow revelations The questions in parliament highmade by José Luis Fernández-García, light the gravity of the allegations the former manager of Abbott which “affect current pharmaceutical Laboratories in Spain. In December spending since cheap drugs are being last year, Fernández-García started substituted by very expensive ones legal action against the company, in with the same therapeutic function”, which Abbott is accused of bribing said Maestro. She added that “everydoctors. According to Fernándezbody knows the methods employed García, each year the company by drug companies to guarantee proddevotes the equivalent of US$ 2.7 ucts sales in the health service”. million to pay doctors in the state-run Profit-sharing between doctors and health service to prescribe certain pharmaceutical companies has been drugs such as Ginecrin and Procrin widely suspected in Spain in the past. (leuprorelin). Nevertheless, Romay-Beccaría Fernández-García, who has delivstated that, apart from some “excepered about 100 compromising docutional situations”, health professionals ments to the judicial authorities, and pharmaceutical companies “operstated in the lawsuit that Abbott ate at present with respect to existing instructed area managers and visitors rules and ethics codes”. (or agents) to “buy” doctors with gifts, trips, and cash. He said that the bribery mechanism Xavier Bosch
S
Critics force Canada’s food-safety law to stall
T
he Canadian government has decided to put its controversial new food-safety legislation on hold in the wake of a host of criticisms. Opponents said the plans to change regulation of food safety and of genetically modified foods would put the public at serious risk. Agriculture Minister Lyle Vanclief sounded the partial retreat on Oct 20, announcing that the bill will be withdrawn until further consultations are held to clarify public misconceptions. “There are a number of people and organisations that raised concerns, who said they didn’t clearly understand what C-80 [the legislation] did and says, so we
THE LANCET • Vol 354 • October 30, 1999
thought it was the appropriate thing to do to have further consultation with them”, Vanclief told reporters. Among the groups to be consulted are 200 federal employees who last week issued a petition claiming that C-80 would transfer responsibility for food safety from the health to the agriculture department, which is responsible for promoting the economic interests of the food-processing industry. Failure to withdraw the legislation—which Health Minister Allan Rock insisted did not diminish his department’s responsibility for food safety—would be “disastrous to the health of infants, children and adults, as well as to
Canadian food producers and manufacturers”, the petition stated. Also weighing into the debate was the UK’s John Verrall, a pharmaceutical chemist with the Food Ethics Council, an independent body funded by the UK Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, who told a press conference that Canada should learn from the regulatory mistakes the UK made which contributed to mad cow disease. “All I say to you today is don’t adopt the very system which has proved so inadequate to us, which I’m sure is a recipe for disaster.” Wayne Kondro
1537