There seems to be a perception among some that the alternative medicine industry is somehow warm and cuddly in comparison to everyone's favourite baddie, 'Big Pharma'. I'm sorry to say that 'Big Altie' is every bit as bad as Big Pharma. These are not charities - they are businesses like any other. Their responsibilities are to their shareholders, not to the public.
There has been much talk this year of legal chill: Big Pharma suing Nancy Olivieri (note the reference to a confidentiality clause) and Peter Wilmshurst; Trafigura with their injunctions and superinjunctions; and the BCA suing Simon Singh.
Whether we're talking about oil companies, pharmaceutical firms, or the alternative medicine industry, these organisations are not slow to use the law to protect their interests. I know of one firm operating in the sphere of alternative medicine that requires employees to sign a remarkably wide-ranging confidentiality agreement.
Employees are forbidden from divulging:
Any information known to [them] from any source regarding [name of firm redacted] now or in the future or for a period of 10 (ten) years after [their] leaving the company.
They are also specifically forbidden from mentioning details regarding particular areas of the business and from divulging "verbal information of any nature known to [them]."
They must also "agree to indemnify the company, its shareholders, staff and asociated consultants for any losses which occur as a direct or indirect result of [their] actions."
While there may be good reasons for a company to require employees to agree to a confidentiality clause, something this wide-ranging must be a disincentive to 'whistle-blowing' of any kind. While I am not aware of anybody being sued for breaching this confidentiality agreement, I note that it is possible that a similar situation to that of Nancy Olivieri may occur.
From the article I linked to earlier:
Olivieri is a haematologist at the University of Toronto who became prominent in 1996 when, during a drug trial of deferiprone she was conducting, she spoke out, saying that she thought it was harming patients. Apotex invoked a confidentiality clause in their agreement with Olivieri threatening to sue her if she published any results or even told patients the drug they were taking could be harmful.
In Olivieri's case, the University of Toronto refused to intervene, while Peter Wilmhurst has not been supported by either his employer or the Medical Defence Union. It is a sad state of affairs when someone can be sued for speaking out and they are left to face the consequences alone, so the charity HealthWatch should be congratulated for their support of Wilmhurst (having set up a fund to aid his defence).
I believe that my comparison between Big Altie and Big Pharma is a reasonable one, but also one that is rather apt. After all, there are many links between the two industries.
Patrick Holford, media nutritionist, "managed to sell his Health Products for Life business to Biocare (owned by Neutrahealth, who [are] 30% owned by Elder Pharmaceuticals) for £464,000." According to the NeutraHealth website, their Chief Executive was previously at Galpharm, "the UK's biggest supplier of non-prescription [OTC] medicine." Meanwhile, Equazen (perhaps best known for the Durham trial-that-wasn't-a-trial) are, as Ben Goldacre reminds us, owned by the £1.6bn pharmaceutical company Galenica.
As Dr Goldacre also notes in the above article:
... despite the rather desperate anti-establishment swagger of the $60bn food supplement pill industry, time and again we see that they use the exact same tricks as the $600bn pharmaceutical industry.
I suspect that use of subgroup analyses is just the tip of the iceberg and that Dr Goldacre might be surprised to find out exactly what tricks certain sectors of the alternative medicine industry are prepared to use. But if confidentiality agreements are widely used (and adhered to) then how will he, or any of us, ever find out?
I used the example of food supplement firms to make a comparison with Big Pharma. See Gimpy's blog for a comparison between a homeopathy manufacturer and Big Pharma (in terms of spending on R&D and marketing). There are probably other parallels between Big Altie and Big Pharma that haven't yet occurred to me.
To me the major difference is that Big Pharma, despite all of the much discussed and publicised drawbacks, from time to time comes up with stuff that actually helps people. So on average, for me, the overall impact of Big Pharma on the society is rather positive, while Big Altie are pure evil.
Fair point, well made Oleg.
I think there is certainly similar behaviour, but - while alternative medicine is (by definition) made up of treatments that have either failed tests or not been tested - there are pharmaceutical products that have been shown to be effective for the conditions they are prescribed for.
I also think it's worth picking up on your point that the drawbacks of conventional medicine and the problems with the pharmaceutical industry are well-documented. I doubt anyone could convincingly make the same claim for alternative medicine.
I'm shocked by a 10-year-after-leaving non-disclosure clause - most industries/companies ask for no more than two years.
The other funny thing about the alt-medicine industry is that it's marketed to - and the products bought by - people who are supposedly greener-than-thou, worried sick about the size of their carbon imprint. Yet these are the same people buying bottled water for no particularly good reason (and feeling virtuous when they toss the bottles into the recycling bin) to wash down the shark cartilage they're taking for arthritis. Last I heard, we need to save the sharks, rather than the other way around.
Thank you for commenting Ruth. Interesting point re the marketing to "greener-than-thou" customers. IIRC, shark cartilage is of dubious value in treating arthritis. Personally, I think it is unethical to market shark cartilage as a remedy. It could be argued that it is also unethical to buy remedies based on shark cartilage.