Healthy Skepticism Library item: 19217

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

Loftus P
Glaxo Pulls Some Ads, Citing Image
The Wall Street Journal 2011 Jan 25
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703555804576102113367709694.html

Full text:

Drug maker GlaxoSmithKline PLC has suspended U.S. television advertisements for anti-impotence pill Levitra.

Deirdre Connelly, president of Glaxo’s North American pharmaceuticals unit, said the company has stepped up its commitment to operate with integrity, to be more respectful of patients and more transparent in how it conducts business. She cited Glaxo’s recent elimination of individual sales targets from the bonus criteria for sales representatives, a move aimed at reassuring doctors that Glaxo reps aren’t primarily focused on pushing pills.

“When we walk into your home through television, we have to do it in a respectful way” that matches the seriousness of medicine, Ms. Connelly said.

Her remarks follow a series of legal woes that have tarnished the image of Glaxo and other drug makers in recent years. Over the past year, Glaxo has set aside more than $5 billion to cover the costs of settling government investigations of its marketing and manufacturing practices, product-liability lawsuits and other matters. Other drug makers including Pfizer Inc. and AstraZeneca PLC also have paid hefty amounts to settle legal cases in recent years.

Glaxo and marketers of other erectile-dysfunction drugs, including Pfizer’s Viagra and Eli Lilly & Co.‘s Cialis, have been criticized over the past decade for airing TV commercials with sexually suggestive themes and explicit discussions of potential side effects during times when children may be watching. The outcry has occasionally prompted politicians to propose bans on such ads.

Although Glaxo believes erectile dysfunction is a legitimate medical condition, it “certainly is not a condition parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents want to explain to children while watching a football game on Thanksgiving,” Ms. Connelly said in a prepared speech she was set to deliver to an industry compliance conference in Washington on Monday.