Shut down Internet drug retailing, Boudria says

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A U.S. company’s pitch to Canadian doctors to write prescriptions for Internet pharmacies in exchange for big bucks is further evidence the government must shut down the industry, Liberal MP Don Boudria said yesterday.

A flyer that some doctors recently received asks: “Are you interested in making $100,000 to $135,000 U.S. a year?”

The recruitment ad, sent by Business Services, USA, seeks doctors willing to review “detailed patient files through on-line consultation and/or co-signing American doctors’ prescriptions.”

The physicians must live in Canada, but can be retired or semi-retired and can be licensed to practise in other countries such as the United Kingdom.

Mr. Boudria, a vocal critic of on-line drug retailing, said the flyer “epitomizes everything that’s already wrong” with an industry that has sparked fears of drug shortages and accusations of unethical and unprofessional behaviour.

“This stretches medical ethics like they were a rubber band,” Mr. Boudria said in an interview.

“What’s going to be in the next ad? Sign prescriptions and get a free toaster? If a used car salesman used this kind of ethics, they’d be out of business.”

Mr. Boudria read the flyer in the Commons during Question Period and asked Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh to get the provinces and pharmacy and medical regulators onside for a crackdown on the industry.

The issue of Canadian doctors writing prescriptions for uninsured Americans in search of cheap prescription drugs is at the heart of a raging debate over the industry.

Mr. Dosanjh, who has spoken out against doctors who write prescriptions for patients they haven’t physically examined, reminded Mr. Boudria yesterday that he recently wrote his provincial counterparts asking them and their regulatory bodies to be more vigilant.

“This is an absolutely unethical and unprofessional practice,” Mr. Dosanjh said. “It must stop; otherwise we’ll put a stop to it.”

A representative of Business Services, USA declined to comment on the company’s latest recruitment drive. But he said the company is a service provider to Canadian Internet pharmacies and has made several similar appeals throughout its six-year history.

A spokesman for the Canadian International Pharmacy Association, which represents some of the industry’s biggest players, said his members don’t usually need to advertise because interested doctors often seek them out.

Executive director David MacKaysaid limiting the number of prescriptions a doctor can write and how many mail-order pharmacies they can work for will “take away the witch-hunt factor.”

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia says a handful of its 8,500 members have reported receiving the flyers, which registrar Morris Van Andel describes as enticing doctors to join a get-rich-quick scheme.

Albert Schumacher, president of the Canadian Medical Association, described this direct-marketing approach as unusual and offensive.

“There’s nothing in it about helping patients—rather it’s about making profit,” Dr. Schumacher said. He said his association continues to remind doctors that all their patients deserve the same kind of personal attention.

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