corner
Healthy Skepticism
Join us to help reduce harm from misleading health information.
Increase font size   Decrease font size   Print-friendly view   Print
Register Log in

Healthy Skepticism Library item: 14801

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

 

Publication type: news

The Prescription Project Criticizes New PhRMA DTCA Guidelines
Pharma Live 2008 Dec 10
http://pharmalive.com/news/index.cfm?articleID=591808&categoryid=9&newsletter=1


Abstract:

The following is the statement of Allan Coukell, Director of Policy for The Prescription Project.


Full text:

“The new Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) DTCA guidelines released today fail to protect consumers from drug risks and do not contribute to public health. As The Prescription Project has pointed out previously, the industry itself can cite no studies showing any health benefits from DTCA.

“These new voluntary guidelines from industry are an attempt to head off more serious consumer protections from a new Congress and the FDA under a new Administration. In fact, just this week [Monday, Dec 8] at a conference hosted by The Prescription Project, Rep Henry Waxman (D-CA), the incoming chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, signaled his interest in further regulating DTCA, including giving FDA the power to prohibit ads for new products.

“Pharmaceuticals (and medical devices) bring complex risks and benefits. Yet many in the medical community believe that DTC provides very little useful information and does more harm than good. Perhaps the most important thing DTCA ads fail to do is tell consumers how well the advertised drug will work. The new PhRMA guidelines don’t address this.

“There are any number of drugs that have been shown to provide little or no meaningful clinical benefit, including certain heavily advertised sleeping pills, cholesterol-lowering agents (for patients without heart disease), allergy treatments, Alzheimer’s drugs – the list goes on.

“Many consumers don’t understand that they aren’t getting complete information from DTCA. One survey (reviewed here) found that 21 percent believed that only ‘extremely effective’ drugs could be marketed directly to consumers. Other mistaken beliefs:

-43 percent believed that only ‘completely safe’ drugs could be advertised directly to consumers, and
-22 percent thought that advertising of drugs with serious side effects had been banned.

“Of course, no drug is ‘completely safe.’ To effectively equip consumers to interpret DTCA would be to explain that the laundry list of side effects included in drug ads is really only meaningful if you know how serious each is, how likely it is to occur and, again, how to weigh that risk against the potential benefit. Not only that, but advertised drugs are generally new drugs, with risks that may not yet be fully known. The FDA/EthicAd site doesn’t provide this sort of discussion.

“Evidence also shows that when patients request an advertised drug, doctors are likely to prescribe it – even when it isn’t medically appropriate. And that there is much concern that drug companies use ‘help seeking ads’ –ads that mention a disease, but not a drug – to convince some healthy people that they need treatment (think restless legs – a real, but rare condition).

“We shouldn’t sell drugs the way we sell soap. A responsible industry would pull its ads and let good science drive the demand for truly innovative and beneficial therapies.”

 

  Healthy Skepticism on RSS   Healthy Skepticism on Facebook   Healthy Skepticism on Twitter

Please
Click to Register

(read more)

then
Click to Log in
for free access to more features of this website.

Forgot your username or password?

You are invited to
apply for membership
of Healthy Skepticism,
if you support our aims.

Pay a subscription

Support our work with a donation

Buy Healthy Skepticism T Shirts


If there is something you don't like, please tell us. If you like our work, please tell others.

Email a Friend








Cases of wilful misrepresentation are a rarity in medical advertising. For every advertisement in which nonexistent doctors are called on to testify or deliberately irrelevant references are bunched up in [fine print], you will find a hundred or more whose greatest offenses are unquestioning enthusiasm and the skill to communicate it.

The best defence the physician can muster against this kind of advertising is a healthy skepticism and a willingness, not always apparent in the past, to do his homework. He must cultivate a flair for spotting the logical loophole, the invalid clinical trial, the unreliable or meaningless testimonial, the unneeded improvement and the unlikely claim. Above all, he must develop greater resistance to the lure of the fashionable and the new.
- Pierre R. Garai (advertising executive) 1963