DOCTORS in Britain who wish to prescribe suntan lotions are forced to base their choice of prescription on a welter of confusing, misleading and sometimes inaccurate information in the official 'bibles' of pharmacology, investigations by New Scientist have found.
The findings emerge in the wake of reports last month in the Drug and Therapeutic Bulletin - published by the consumer magazine Which? and sent to all doctors - that manufacturers of commercially available suntan lotions provide customers with inadequate information about the extent to which the lotions will protect skin from harmful solar radiation that can cause cancers.
Doctors usually make informed decisions about which medicines they should prescribe by referring to the Monthly Index of Medical Specialities (MIMS) or the British National Formulary (BNF), which is updated every six months. However, investigations by New Scientist show that, like the labels on commercial sunscreens, these two 'bibles' of pharmacology, which ...
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