Big Pharma – the worldwide multibillion-dollar drug industry – does us a huge service by curing our ills. Unfortunately, its correspondingly gargantuan sales can attract all manner of unethical players out to make a personal profit by misrepresenting themselves and their products to their buyers: our doctors.

On Dec. 11, the District of Columbia took a first step in getting Big Pharma to clean its house by giving initial approval to the SafeRx Act of 2007, legislation that would force...