Healthy Skepticism Library item: 19160
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: Journal Article
Nascimento AC
[Drug advertising to the general public: conceptual parameters of a risk producer practice]
Cien Saude Colet 2010 Nov; 15:(3):3423-31
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1413-81232010000900017&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en
Abstract:
This article analyzes some concepts
relating to marketing, advertising,
medications, regulation and
manipulation. It discusses ethical
and health surveillance parameters
of drugs advertising for the general
public. The focus of this work is
the analysis of contradictions from
a conceptual point of view between
the practice of pharmaceutical
advertising as a tool for the
increase of sales and the conquest
of markets versus the policy of
rational use of medicines. Academic
studies and monitoring of drugs
advertising conducted by the
National Health Surveillance Agency
show that the contents of the
advertising pieces oriented towards
the general public overestimate the – sometimes dubious – qualities of
their medication, focusing almost
exclusively on the benefits and put
them in a central position in the
therapeutic process. They also fail
to mention the risks inherent in
their use. Rather than focusing on
regulatory proposals aimed at
creating constraints to this
practice, this article discusses the
impossibility, considering the
interests of public health, of the
coexistence of marketing with the
policies for the correct, rational
and safe use of drugs.