Background information on the SPF

The Portuguese Pharmacological Society

Background information of the Society

Walter Osswald

In December 1968, Professor Toscano Rico, the then Chairman of the Institute of Pharmacology of the University of Lisbon Medical School, convened a meeting in order to connect all those – and they were pretty few – who called themselves pharmacologists and to launch the corresponding scientific society. Due to the suspicion with which the then prevailing political regime viewed any attempt by citizens to organise themselves into associations, even with scientific aims, the Portuguese Society was not founded until 1970 and held its first Annual Meeting the same year.

Since then it has met regularly with the notable exception of 1974, the year of the revolution which brought basic conditions for the establishment of democracy in Portugal, but also a period of political persecution and academic turmoil.

From its beginnings, and in obedience to it statutes, the Society accepted as members only persons whose main activity lies in the fields of experimental or clinical pharmacology or toxicology, and who have published at least two papers in international journals with a refereeing system. These strict criteria keep the Society small but nevertheless the number of members has increased from 28 to 99 during the three decades of its existence. So has the number of communications presented at its Annual Meeting – from 17 in 1970 to 60 in 1998.

International contacts and interchange have also been sought from the very beginning, through the presence of foreign invited speakers (the list of which includes Pieter Van Zwieten, Sir John Vane, David de Wied, K Graeff, Fred Lembeck, K Repke and B Vargaftig amongst others), as well as through the organization of joint meetings with other Pharmacological Societies. Our Society has met four times with the Spanish Society, once with the German, Hungarian and Yugoslav Societies, once with the French, once with he Scandinavian and the meeting in Porto in April will be our second meeting with the British Society.

Since 1977 the Society has been a member of IUPHAR and its members have participated in a1l the International Congresses organised by the Union; it is also a Founding Member of the Federation of the Federation of European Pharmacological Societies. The Society also encourages the participation of its members in international evens, and provides travel grants. Abstracts of the communications presented at its meetings are written in English.

Cooperation with pharmaceutical companies is sought: they are accepted as associate members, participate in the meetings and their medical advisers often present communications of clinical pharmacology to the Society.

The Society cooperates with the Health Authorities in the field of drug policies, especially pharmacovigilance, the regulation of clinical trials, and animal experimentation. This institutional collaboration is augmented by the presence of its members in the committees in charge of ethics, registration of new drugs, therapeutic recommendations, teaching and health education. The Society is aware of its responsibilities and tries to fulfil to them by acting as a forum for scientific discussion, establishing prizes for excellence, training younger members and awarding grants. The President and Officers are elected at the General Assembly and its 10th President is Professor Margarida Caramona, of the Coimbra University School of Pharmacy.

(This text was written by Professor Walter Osswald, a past president of the SPF and published on the BPS Bulletin, Spring 1999)