Why one medical journal will no longer take pharma advertisements

• Please note, Croakey readers, the original post has been edited (explanation at bottom of post).

Here is a link to an editorial in which the journal, Emergency Medicine Australasia, announces its intention to stop taking pharma advertisements.

Not surprisingly, this move is attracting international attention.

Thanks to the editorial’s authors, Professor George Jelinek and Professor Anthony Brown, and the journal for allowing this republication.

A stand against drug company advertising

(By George A Jelinek and Anthony FT Brown, Emergency Practice Innovation Centre and the University of Melbourne, St Vincent’s Hospital, Fitzroy, Victoria, and Department of Emergency Medicine, Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, Brisbane, and School of Medicine, University of Queensland, Queensland, Australia)

Emergency Medicine Australasia (EMA) has taken a stand against drug company advertising in medical journals by making a decision to no longer publish such advertisements in the EMA journal. At the Editorial Meeting in Canberra last November 2010, and with the support of the Councils of the respective owners of the journal, the ACEM and the Australasian Society for Emergency Medicine, the Editors and Editorial Board of EMA unanimously upheld a motion to no longer accept drug advertisements.

The rest of the article can be accessed freely here.

• Croakey initially published the entire editorial. I had understood there was approval from the publisher to do so. But there had been a miscommunicaton between the authors and publisher about this. Never mind; the article is still freely there to read – it’s just one more click away…