Healthy Skepticism Library item: 20101

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

Drug promotion risks highlighted
West Coast Times 2000 Jun 22

Full text:

The latest blood clot scare surrounding the third-generation contraceptive pill highlights the potential dangers of advertising directly to consumers, government drug-buying agency Pharmac says.

New Zealand women were the highest users of third generation contraceptive pills in the world, with intensive marketing to doctors initially responsible, Pharmac general manager Wayne McNee said.

“The use of third-generation oral contraceptives really peaked before the drug industry’s recent push into direct to consumer advertising.

“However it is a sobering thought to think what might have happened if women had been bombarded with messages promoting these drugs, as is happening with drug advertising today”.

A Otage Universoty and Health Ministry study published last week found 20 women on the pill died of blood clots in the lungs in one decade. It also said that for every 100,000 women taking oral contraceptives, one would die each year from a blood clot in the viens.

Blood clots are associated with second and third generation contraceptives, but third generation oral contraceptive pills carry a higher risk.

Mr McNee said at the peak of marketing to doctors, 60 percent of New Zealand women were using the third generation pill, compared with 5 percent in Australia and 10 percent in the United States.

“Not only were they said to have less risk of complications but also that they were a ‘more feminine’ pill and would cause fewer of the minor side effects”.

However, United States medicines watchdog, the Federal Drug Agency, told the manufacturers not to claim these benefits as there was no scientific proof, Mr McNee said.

“We have to be constantly on guard to ensure that New Zealanders get the best treatment, not the best advertised one”.

Most new drugs entering the market had also been studied on only a limited number of patients, he said.

“That means that while new drugs are presented as fully safe and effective, their safety profile becomes clear only after they have been used for a few years”.

The latest figures show the number of women taking the third generation pill plunged to 52,761 in March this year from 168,327 three years earlier.

New Zealand is the only country beside the United States that allows direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription medicines.