Pharmaceutical companies set the standard when it comes to evidence, according to outgoing NHMRC CEO Professor Warwick Anderson.
Professor Anderson told the National Press Club on Wednesday that any product claiming a health benefit should be required to provide evidence to back the claim.
“....if you want to say something has a health benefit, you’ve got to provide some evidence about it,” he said.
According to Professor Anderson, there is no justification for two tiers of regulation that sees a higher burden of proof for one group of medicines over another.
“If you’re in complementary medicines you do not have to go through the same Therapeutic Goods Administration process as the pharmaceutical industry. I can’t see the justification for that.”
Professor Anderson was scathing of companies and individual healthcare professionals that promote unproven treatments, often at the expense of patients.
“It’s distressing when unscrupulous people exploit the sick for personal gain, selling products that have no hope at all of helping.
“It’s one thing when people sell magic therapies to the worried well. That’s mostly just a waste of money or expensive urine. But I can see no excuse for practitioners urging people ill with diseases that are entirely treatable or curable by what its critics call conventional medicine, to substitute treatments with an ineffective product.
“This is especially unethical when the practitioner personally benefits, say, by selling a line of herbal extracts or miracle foods or even an app or a cookbook,” he said.
Professor Anderson has left the NHMRC after eight years following his appointment as Secretary-General of the Strassbourg-based Human Frontier Science Program.
He has been succeeded by distinguished medical researcher, Professor Anne Kelso AO.
Professor Anderson also cautioned against "vested interests" influencing funding decisions for the Medical Research Future Fund.
The proposed $20 billion fund, which is still facing a funding shortfall after the Government's failure to secure political support for the Medicare and PBS co-payment changes, is likely to be administered by the NHMRC.
However, according to Professor Anderson, vested interests are already attempting to influence where the expected $1 billion in annual disbursements under the Fund are directed.
While he did not name or identify any particular vested interest, Professor Anderson talked about researchers or groups with a strong focus on a particular area of research.
