Abstract

In the last 25 years pharmaceutical manufacture has gradually become more concentrated among fewer manufacturers, with many mergers and take-overs. As a result many companies have become groups, with a parent company and two or more subsidiaries each with its own staff and manufacturing facilities. Such developments are usually of little concern to prescribers. But prescribers are affected when two companies belonging to the same group practise pseudo-competition, that is market the same or a similar preparation for the same indications under different names without mentioning that the two companies belong to the same group, and without explaining the relationship between the products.