Talk:Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin

How Independent?

The Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin used to be published by the Consumers' Association (publishers of Which? magazine, etc). Both the DTRB and the Adverse Drug Reactions Bulletin, which had an identical format, were distributed free to all doctors employed in the National Health Service in England and Wales. There was nominally a subscription scheme, but few recipients can have paid. As they carried no advertising, there must have been a massive subsidy: presumably from the NHS - i.e. the government. This subsidy was removed a couple of years ago, on the grounds that there were other sources of prescribing advice on the internet, since when readers have been asked to pay subscriptions.

I became aware of this when working in hospitals around the UK: when I was employed in England or Wales, these bulletins came free through the mail, but when I moved to Scotland they stopped. This implied to me a subsidy from the Department of Health in London, which used to cover England and Wales: nowadays England only. I wondered how independent a controlled circulation journal for prescribers could be, if it was paid for by their main employer. I wrote to the editor of the DTRB about 25 years ago to ask who was paying for my copy, and received no reply, after which I decided not to regard their advice as being independent. However, at least it appeared not to be subsidised by the drug companies, who pay for most of the free information about drugs, so it served as a counterbalance.NRPanikker (talk) 23:08, 14 December 2009 (UTC)