The UK's National Health service is getting sharp criticism from both patients and doctors, after announcing it's new "guidelines" for General Practitioners around Viagra prescriptions. The NHS has recommended that GPs limit Viagra user to two tablets per month. Viagra is already hard enough to get under the NHS's restrictions, so it's no surprise that patients are displeased with the edict. But their doctors aren't happy about it either. Maybe they resent the NHS dictating how they should care for their patients - especially when the agency refuses to share the reasoning behind the new pill quotas with the public.
The recommendation was based on evidence in a study by an organization contracted by the NHS, who say they can't publish the information for copyright reasons. Said an NHS spokesperson, " 'As far as we're concerned we're not allowed to, because of the contract we hold with them, publish the evidence they give us because it's their product, it's what they produce, it's not our intellectual property, it's not something we produce.' "
Dr. Paul Roblin, chief executive of a GPs Local Medical Committee, accused the bureaucrats of finger-pointing: 'There are four organisations involved...we're trying to find who actually supports the restriction of information, it's actually quite difficult, they all blame each other'.
The organization that conducted the original study is called Solutions for Public Health, which might be a misnomer. Wouldn't you think the public would have a right to know how public health policy is determined?
