PharmFree movement growing

The almost 50,000 medical students who belong to the American Medical Student Association are being urged to join in on a national campaign called The Amnesty Campaign. The idea is to collect everything that pharma has doled out to them from pens and Post-it notes to mugs, calendars. According to a press release:

"The campaign is the first in a number of events leading up to National PharmFree Day, which will be recognized on December 8, 2004. National PharmFree Day will serve as a day of action where medical students, residents and physicians alike to speak out against the pharmaceutical industry's biased marketing practices.

" The pharmaceutical industry has ramped up its spending on marketing dramatically over the past few years, says Brian Palmer, M.D., M.S., M.P.H., AMSA national president. As physicians in training, AMSA believes that prescribing decisions should be made on evidence instead of marketing. The collective effect of these giveaways is to drive up drug costs and hinder evidence-based medicine.

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