Social Audit Ltd

P O Box 111 London NW1 8XG

Telephone/Fax 44 (0)171 586 7771

Dear Dr Sampson,

Thank you for your letter of 5 June. I apologise if my letter of 8 May was offensive to you personally. I had not intended this but agree that my letter was rather teasing. However, I was trying to make light of the situation, rather than go into overdrive. I thought this might provide an opportunity to laugh it off, and give you space to reconsider what seemed to me a preposterous refusal.

I originally wrote to the medical information department with a simple and straightforward request for information of a kind SmithKline Beecham would readily give to any doctor or nurse. Three weeks later I get a flat refusal, patently beyond the spirit of the Code it professed to uphold. Dismissing the evidence I offered of 20-years experience as a specialist in the field, it regretted that the company would not provide even a citation to a published work to "a member of the public".

You may have thought it impertinent of me to suggest you get a second opinion. I accept it was cheeky and probably shouldn’t have been, but there was that element of provocation. To some extent, I also felt I was turning the other cheek and giving helpful advice, because you didn’t seem to appreciate what damage you risked to the company’s standing and reputation.

Hence also my reference to the Guidelines on provision of information to the public. I could not reconcile the response from SKB with what the ABPI said when it launched them in October 1995. These Guidelines were described as "a big step forward in providing both patients and public with the information they increasingly want about medicines", and the President of the APBI was quoted saying: "I believe this industry must operate on the basis of trust - with patients, doctors and all those involved in health care."

In your second letter you did not to respond to my request that you identify the specific provisions of the Code which you claimed tied your hands. I can find none. The information I asked for was clearly not ‘promotional’ within the meaning of clause 1.2 and "Upon reasonable request, companies must promptly provide ... accurate and relevant information about the medicines which the company markets" [7.1], and "Substantiation for any information, claim or comparison must be provided without delay ...." [7.4].

Admittedly these clauses refer to supply of information to "members of the health professions or appropriate administrative staff", but you are pushing it to suggest it was proper to deny me that information because I am "a member of the public". I was neither invited nor introduced as such when I lectured at an international meeting of your R&D staff, some years ago.

I sent the article on Secrecy and Medicines as a signal that my request related not only to the substantive issues raised in my letter to Ms Jones, but was also very much concerned with SKB’s policies on disclosure. Your letters indicate they leave much to be desired.

Even if you failed to see any of this, I don’t think you were entitled to get so huffy about the tone of my letter and then dish out gratuitous criticism of the article I sent. Your opinion that this and my letter "allude to a conspiracy within medicine as a whole" indicate that you misunderstand and/or seek to misrepresent and discredit my views. In my letter I emphasised that, although SKB refused my request for information, other companies had readily responded: this doesn’t signal conspiracy to me, only that SKB is in a league on its own. I confirm that I regard the tendency to secrecy as pervasive, a sign of weakness, and potentially dangerous too.

I shall publish this correspondence and may also decide to make a formal complaint under the ABPI Code. In any case I agree, albeit for entirely different reasons, that it would be fruitless to pursue this correspondence. SmithKline Beecham has now more than waived any right it had to expect me to communicate further but, if I did need to get in touch, I would write directly to Mr Leschly.

Yours sincerely,

Charles Medawar

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	Correspondence with pharmaceutical companies