Gifts/inducements

No gift, benefit in kind or pecuniary advantage shall be offered or given to members of the health professions or to administrative staff as an inducement to prescribe, supply, administer, recommend or buy any medicine, subject to the provisions of Clause 18.2. 

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain has issued guidance in relation to the acceptance of gifts and inducements to prescribe or supply. The Society states that pharmacists accepting items such as gift vouchers, bonus points, discount holidays, sports equipment etc would be in breach of the Society s Code of Ethics and advises pharmacists not to participate in such offers. 

Procedures should ensure that Clause 18 rlelat-ing to gifts and inducements is complied with and that promotional gifts or prizes comply with Clauses 18.2 and 18.3. 

Louis Lemery, son of the immortal French physician and chemist Nicolas Lemery, was bom in Paris on January 25, 1677, and studied at Harcourt College (194). Because of the boy s gift of eloquence, his unde, Louis Lemery, a famous attorney, tried to induce him to study law. Young Louis preferred his father s calling, however, and at the age of twenty-one years received the degree of doctor of medicine. Two years later he entered the Academy to study, first under M. de Tournefort and then under his father Nicolas Lemery. 

The aim of code of practice rules about gifts and prizes for competitions is that these should not induce the recipient healthcare professional to prescribe or supply a particular medicine. The specific restrictions in each country vary. 

Turkey Must be of modest value and relevant to the professional activity of the recipient Prohibited except that certain draws of, for example, rare books at a congress may be allowed. See code Donations to institutions are not considered gifts. Donations should be limited to state-run and not-for-profit organisations Permitted, provided that they enhance patient care or benefit, are not inducements to prescribe and bear no more than the name of the company concerned Payment for attending company-sponsored meetings or time spent in interviews is not permitted Permitted with some specific conditions. See code... 

Gifts, pecuniary advantage or benefit in kind must not be supplied, offered or promised to a healthcare professional as an inducement to prescribe, supply, sell or administer a medicinal product. 

Gifts, bonuses, pecuniary advantages or benefits in kind must not be granted, offered or promised to healthcare professionals involved in the cycle of prescription, purchase, distribution, dispensing and administration, or to administrative staff, as an inducement to prescribe, dispense, supply or administer any medicine, unless they are inexpensive gifts related to the practice of medicine or pharmacy. 

Humphry Davy was not only an exceptionally gifted scientist, he also had remarkable social talents, and it is typical of him that already as a young man his career was sponsored by such luminaries in British science as Sir Joseph Banks, Henry Cavendish and Benjamin Thompson (Count von Rumford). He was also a great communicator, who from an early age made a name for himself in the popularization of science. At the same time, he had an intuition in scientific matters that allowed him to select problems that would prove to be fruitful and important. His work on electrolysis using Alessandro Volta s newly invented pile is a good example of this. He was convinced that in electrolysis the current induced the separation of compounds into their elementary components rather than the synthesis of new substances, as many scientists believed at the time. 

It is not necessary that bodies which combine together shall have opposite poles. . . one gifted with the greater polarity can, by contact only, induce the opposite polarity in a less polar body. 

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