THE GERMAN PROPAGANDA FOR REFORM
Appreciation by a German Lay Publication
Of all those interested in the reform of the proprietary drug business, the patient has the most at stake—and the public is beginning to understand this fact. If physicians are slow in recognizing the necessity for improvement, laymen will eventually demand reform in their own interests. The movement, therefore, will not be halted by the indifference of the unprogressive element of the medical profession. New evidence of this fact is furnished by a recent editorial comment by the German lay periodical, Wohlfahrt und Wirtschaft (Public Welfare and Economics), on the Arzneimittel-Kommission, a German organization resembling in purpose if not in scope the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry of the American Medical Association.
“One would suppose,” says this lay journal, “that medicinal preparations which did not win the approval of scientific medicine would not be used by any physician, but the contrary is the case. In fact, those new medicinal preparations or old ones with new names that flood the market far surpass the actual demand according to the judgment of all authorities. The impartial advisers in this field, practitioners and members of medical faculties, demand, as a matter of public welfare that this overproduction should be regulated in the interests of the sick, the consumers; but, unfortunately, a medical man, like any one else, is impressed by the suggestion from advertising done on a large scale.”
The movement for reform, Wohlfahrt und Wirtschaft goes on to explain, is not exclusively a medical one. It is a part of the reaction of “economic common sense” against a too individualistic commercial system which leads to overproduction. In other words, it is a reaction against the system of making things because they can be sold rather than because they are needed. The interests of producers need to be harmonized with those of consumers, not merely in the drug trade alone, but throughout the commercial world. Wohlfahrt und Wirtschaft quotes with unqualified approval the ArzneimittelKommission’s statement of its position: An industry which serves the science of healing must be guided by that science. (Eine Industrie die der Heilwissenschaft dient, hat sich nach der Heilwissenschaft zu richten.)
The movement for reform in Germany has apparently gathered sufficient impetus among the laity to go on of its own momentum, even though, with one exception, German medical journals, reluctant to lose the advertising of drug houses by publishing criticisms of their wares, have become lukewarm, if not antagonistic, to the efforts of the ArzneimittelKommission. The one exception is the Therapeutische Monatshefte, which, in its May issue, quotes in full the editorial just referred to and makes the following comment: “These lines reveal such intimate knowledge and correct judgment of existing conditions that the suggestions advanced in regard to possible reforms deserve serious consideration. For us physicians the editorial is important in that it recognizes that the efforts of the profession to accomplish the reforms aimed at are rational and beneficial from the standpoint of general economics and the public welfare.”—(From The Journal A. M. A., June 13, 1914.)