The second interim report of the Joint Committee on Prescribing.

  • Great Britain. Joint Committee on Prescribing.
Date:
1950
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The second interim report of the Joint Committee on Prescribing. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    majority) that the preparation of a list of drugs should start at once. There are two ways in which lists of preparations could be compiled to inform practitioners of the preparations which they could or could not prescribe without risk of having to justify their action. First, a list could be drawn up of drugs of doubtful value or unnecessarily expensive brands of standard drugs. The difficulties of compiling such a list were, however, clearly formidable. It would be necessary to compile an exhaustive list so that no unnecessarily expensive brand of a standard drug should by its omission be regarded as ‘“‘ approved ’’; it would be necessary to add to the list at very frequent intervals as new drugs or new preparations came on to the market. The second and more practicable method would be to compile a list of. *“ approved ” drugs which a practitioner would know he could prescribe, in reasonable quantity, without question. PREPARATIONS ADVERTISED DIRECT TO THE PUBLIC 9. We were in doubt about the meaning of drugs of “‘ unethical character ” referred to in our terms of reference. We understand that in the pharmaceutical industry this phrase is applied to preparations which are advertised direct to the public as a means of increasing their sale. While there are many preparations which fall within this definition, some of them are advertised also in the medical press and not all of them are essentially different in character from preparations which are advertised exclusively to the medical profession in journals or by other means. We have not, therefore, attempted to allocate preparations into the categories suggested in our terms of reference but have adopted a more suitable classification (see paragraph 11). Since, however, the respon- sibility for prescribing should rest solely with the practitioner, the Committee (with one dissentient) regards it as undesirable that medicinal preparations advertised direct to the public should be prescribable on Form E.C.10. PRESCRIBING OF STANDARD DRUGS 10. We agreed that all drugs and preparations described in the British Pharmacopeia, the British Pharmaceutical Codex and the National Formulary should be freely prescribable (except those classified as foods, toilet preparations, or not drugs for N.H.S. purposes, by the Definition of Drugs Joint Sub- Committee). These drugs and preparations are referred to as “standard ”’ or “ official.” PRESCRIBING OF PROPRIETARY PREPARATIONS 11. At our request the Departments provided us with samples and full details of some 50 proprietary preparations. A study of these suggested that proprietary preparations could for our purposes be conveniently arranged under the following six categories :— (1) New drugs of proved value not yet standard. (2) Proprietary brands of standard drugs, singly or in combination. (3) Standard preparations, and new remedies of proved value, in elegant form or vehicle. (4) Qualitative and/or quantitative modifications in the composition or combination of standard preparations, or new remedies of proved value, which are not accepted as therapeutically superior to preparations included either alone or in combination in the British Pharmacopeceia, the British Pharmaceutical Codex or the National Formulary.