Ethics and bioethics

Why we defend the ‘conscience’ clause

Christians in Pharmacy (CiP), a network of Christian pharmacists, technicians and pharmaceutical scientists, is seriously concerned with the implications of the proposals in the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) consultation on religion, personal beliefs and values in pharmacy ( The …

My concerns with changes to the conscience clause

I read with interest about the proposed change to the conscience clause for pharmacists ( The Pharmaceutical Journal online, 22 December 2016). This concerns me. I have been a Christian for 59 years and a pharmacist for 36 years. One of the reasons I chose pharmacy was th…

Best pharmacy practice guidance

ASHP best practices 2016­–2017: position and guidance documents of ASHP, by Bruce Hawkins…

NHS plans to crack down on conflicts of interest

NHS doctors will have to declare income from any private practice in new proposals drawn up by NHS England and put out for public consultation on 20 September 2016.…

Brexit shouldn’t affect plans for new clinical trials regulations, conference hears

Speaker says there will probably be no major changes to the implementation of the EU Clinical Trials directive in the UK, which should help harmonise the rules in Europe and improve the transparency of clinical trials…

Astellas UK suspended from ABPI following ‘deception on a grand scale’

Astellas UK’s membership of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry has been suspended for a year following complaints about a meeting organised for 100 clinicians in Europe that broke the industry’s code of practice.…

Boots makes legal complaints against The Guardian newspaper

Boots UK has made legal complaints against The Guardian in relation to several articles following its April 2016 investigation, which alleged that the pharmacy chain had placed undue pressure on its pharmacists to perform medicines use reviews so that it could claim the maximum payments possible fro…

Doctors who accept industry lunches prescribe more promoted drugs

Doctors who accept free meals from the pharmaceutical industry have higher prescribing rates for the branded drugs the manufacturers promote, according to research published in JAMA Internal Medicine.…

UN chief lauds Pfizer’s decision to ban use of its drugs in executions

The United Nations high commissioner for human rights has praised pharmaceutical company Pfizer’s decision to ban the sale and distribution of its drugs to prisons for use in executions by lethal injection.…

Healthcare professionals want transparency around fees received from pharmaceutical companies

Most healthcare professionals believe that details of payments they receive from the pharmaceutical industry should be made known to the public, but there are concerns that the information could be misinterpreted.…