No Drug Ads in Medical Journals?

If a medical journal refuses to take advertising from drug companies, it that an unconstitutional limit on freedom of speech? Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA) chief Billy Tauzin, the former Congressman, went so far as to complain of "human rights abuses" when George University professor Adrienne Fugh-Berman suggested (in an article in PLoS Medicine) that medical journals adopt such policies.

After receiving a lot of flack (including being charged with hypocrisy since at least one drug company official sits on its board), the open-source journal fired back in a hard-hitting editorial, which you can read here.

The core of their response concludes:

This is nonsense. Drug advertising is often misleading, and it can potentially distort clinical practice. The need to prevent another Vioxx tragedy, in which the “drug marketing got well ahead of the science, ” requires us all to think carefully about the net effect upon society of drug adverts. Public health must always come before industry's unfettered “rights.”