PharmFree is an ongoing campaign begun in 2002 by the American Medical Student Association

American Medical Student Association

The American Medical Student Association , founded in 1950 and based in Washington, D.C., is the oldest and largest independent association of physicians-in-training in the United States. AMSA is a student-governed, national organization...

 (www.pharmfree.org), in collaboration with No Free Lunch

No Free Lunch (organization)

No Free Lunch is a US-based advocacy organization that holds that marketing methods employed by drug companies influence the way doctors and other healthcare providers prescribe medications...

, to organize political activism challenging the practice of pharmaceutical gifting to students and physician

Physician

A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...

s.

Objectives

AMSA established PharmFree for reasons such as:

• The practice of pharmaceutical gifting to students and physicians increases the costs of health care for patients and does not primarily serve patient interests
• Medical students want to be honest with future patients about why a particular medication was prescribed without compromising personal and professional integrity.
• Medical students want to treat future patients using modalities supported by the best existing clinical evidence, not carefully packaged advertising.

PharmFree Week

AMSA sponsors an annual National PharmFree Week, wherein discussion of pharmaceutical marketing tactics, film screenings, panel discussions, residency fairs and new campaign launches take place. PharmFree Week serves to allow medical students, residents and physicians alike to speak out against the pharmaceutical industry's biased marketing practices.http://releases.usnewswire.com/printing.asp?id=35067

Counterdetailing initiative

PharmFree launched its latest campaign, the Counterdetailing Initiative, in 2005, at its annual PharmFree Day event. The mission of AMSA's Counterdetailing Initiative is to:

• Educate medical students about evidence-based medicine
  Evidence-based medicine
  Evidence-based medicine or evidence-based practice aims to apply the best available evidence gained from the scientific method to clinical decision making. It seeks to assess the strength of evidence of the risks and benefits of treatments and diagnostic tests...
  
   and evidence-based prescription practices
• Empower medical students through activism through education about existing clinical guidelines
• Introduce sources of unbiased and expert-reviewed information on pharmaceutical drugs to physicians
• Share knowledge about the effect of pharmaceutical promotions on the prescribing habits of physicians

External links

• The Medical Letter on Drugs and Therapeutics
  The Medical Letter on Drugs and Therapeutics
  The Medical Letter on Drugs and Therapeutics is a scientific journal providing evaluations of drugs...
  
  
• AMSA.org - 'AMSA's PharmFree Campaign'
• DoctorRW.blogspot.com - 'The hypocrisy of the American Medical Student Association', R.W. Donnel, (December 11, 2005)
• MJA.com.au - 'The ethics of pharmaceutical industry relationships with medical students', Wendy A. Rogers, Peter R. Mansfield, Annette J. Braunack-Mayer and Jon N. Jureidini, Medical Journal of Australia, vol 180, no 8, p 411-414 (2004)
• USNewsWire.com - 'Nation's Medical Students Resist Pharmaceutical Industry Temptations' (August 23, 2004)