Bradley Merrill Thompson, a Member of the Firm in the Health Care and Life Sciences practice, in the firm’s Washington, DC, office, was quoted in Bloomberg BNA Medical Devices Law & Industry Report, in “Drug, Device Industries Seek Fewer Limits on Off-Label Communications,” by Bronwyn Mixter. (Read the full version – subscription required.)
Following is an excerpt:
“We are all here to serve the patient, and to do what is in the patient’s best interest. So if there is a difference of view between industry and patient groups, those differences really need to be worked out keeping the patient at the center of the discussion,” Bradley Merrill Thompson, a Washington-based health-care attorney with Epstein Becker & Green PC, told Bloomberg BNA in a May 1 email. Thompson also is a Bloomberg BNA advisory board member.
Thompson said he “would encourage the industry groups and patient groups to get together and talk about this, and sort it through to determine exactly what the core difference is. If there is an approach that would best serve patients, that approach should win out.”
“That said, not every patient group truly represents all patients. And indeed, sometimes differences of opinion are not really based on intellectual differences regarding facts, but a lack of trust,” Thompson said. “If the issue is trust, then industry needs to work to figure out how to build up that trust.”