Supreme Court concerned about pharma firms offering freebies to doctors

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday expressed concern at freebies - including gold coins, fridges, LCD TVs, and funding international trips for vacations -offered by pharmaceutical companies to manipulate doctors' prescriptions and to recommend drugs produced by them.

A bench of Justices UU Lalit and S Ravindra Bhat said: "It is a matter of great public importance and concern when it is demonstrated that a doctor's prescription can be manipulated, and driven by the motive to avail the freebies offered to them by pharmaceutical companies, ranging from gifts such as gold coins, fridges and LCD TVs to funding international trips for vacations or to attend medical conferences."

Justice Bhat, who authored the judgment on behalf of the bench, said freebies are technically not 'free' - the cost of supplying such freebies is usually factored into the drug, driving prices up, thus creating a perpetual publicly injurious cycle.

The bench added that the threat of prescribing medication that is significantly marked up, over effective generic counterparts instead of such a quid pro quo exchange was taken cognizance of by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare.

It noted that medical practitioners have a quasi-fiduciary relationship with their patients. "A doctor's prescription is considered the final word on the medication to be availed by the patient, even if the cost of such medication is unaffordable or barely within the economic reach of the patient - such as the level of the trust reposed in doctors," said the top court.

The bench added that it is also a settled principle of law that no court will lend its aid to a party that roots its cause of action in an immoral or illegal act meaning that none should be allowed to profit from any wrongdoing coupled with the fact that statutory regimes should be coherent and not self-defeating. "Doctors and pharmacists being complementary and supplementary to each other in the medical profession, a comprehensive view must be adopted to regulate their conduct given the contemporary statutory regimes and regulations," said Justice Bhat.

The bench said the conceded participation of the assessee - the provider or donor- was prohibited, as far as their receipt by the medical practitioners was concerned. "That medical practitioner were forbidden from accepting such gifts, or 'freebies' was no less a prohibition on the part of their giver, or donor," it added.

The apex court made these observations while dismissing an appeal filed by Apex Laboratories Pvt Ltd challenging a Madras High Court verdict, declining to interfere with the Income Tax authorities' decision against the firm to claim the benefit of business expenditure towards gifting freebies to medical practitioners for creating awareness about health supplement 'Zincovit'.

It said the denial of the tax benefit cannot be construed as penalizing the assessee pharmaceutical company and only its participation in what is an action prohibited by law, precludes the assessee from claiming it as deductible expenditure.

"The incentives (or 'freebies') given by Apex, to the doctors, had a direct result of exposing the recipients to the odium of sanctions, leading to a ban on their practice of medicine. Those sanctions are mandated by law, as they are embodied in the code of conduct and ethics, which are normative, and have legally binding effect."

"Pharmaceutical companies' gifting freebies to doctors, etc. is clearly 'prohibited by law', and not allowed to be claimed as a deduction under Section 37(1). Doing so would wholly undermine public policy. The well-established principle of interpretation of taxing statutes - that they need to be interpreted strictly - cannot sustain when it results in an absurdity contrary to the intentions of the Parliament." (IANS)

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