Ken Harvey (professor)

Ken Harvey is an Australian public health doctor, currently adjunct Associate Professor at the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University. Described by The Age as an "anti-quackery crusader", Harvey is an advocate of evidence-based medicine and a critic of pharmaceutical marketing and unproven diet products.

Harvey graduated in medicine from the University of Melbourne. He developed an interest in the factors that influence the prescribing of antibiotics, especially where it involved unethical promotion. He worked at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and then as an adjunct associate professor in the School of Public Health at La Trobe University.

Harvey took part in drawing up ethical criteria for the promotion of medicinal drugs for the World Health Organization, and served on a committee that formulated the Australian "Quality Use of Medicines" policy. He has also worked on medicinal drug policy in Southeast Asia, Croatia, and Jordan. He is Chair of the Governing Council of Health Action International Asia Pacific. He served on the TGA's Transparency Review Panel, the Medicines Australia Code Review Panel, the Working Group on Promotion of Therapeutic Products, and the Natural Therapy Review Advisory Committee. Another of his areas of interest is the application of information technology to optimise medicinal drug use.

Harvey quit his job with La Trobe in 2014 after the university agreed to receive $15 million from Swisse Wellness to fund a new complementary medicine centre. He told the Australian Journal of Pharmacy that "in 2013-4 Swisse sought a research partnership with a number of Australian universities; all but one resisted on the grounds that, while such an association might give Swisse a fig-leaf of respectability, it would not reflect well on the reputation of the university involved." This followed legal action by Swisse against the Australian Broadcasting Corporation for defamation in a consumer advocacy show The Checkout, which criticised their research methods.

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