Healthy Skepticism Library item: 225

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

Guldal D, Semin S.
The influences of drug companies' advertising programs on physicians
Int J Health Serv 2000; 30:(3):585-95

Abstract:

This study investigates the influences of drug companies’ advertising programs on physicians. Of the 446 physicians interviewed, 53.9 percent were visited by pharmaceutical company representatives at least once a day, and 43.5 percent spent 15 minutes or more per day on these visits. With respect to the information delivered by the pharmaceutical company representatives, 67.7 percent of physicians thought it was not reliable, and 62.8 percent reported that it had no effect on their prescription writing. The promotional gifts had little effect on prescriptions for 43.9 percent of physicians, and 80.3 percent reported that these gifts were distributed unequally among doctors according to the drugs they prescribed. Only 23.5 percent of physicians supported the prohibition of promotion programs; 90.6 percent of physicians agreed that drugs are too expensive, and 82.9 percent agreed on the presence of overprescription. The authors evaluate these results and provide some suggestions for improving the sources of information for drug prescribing.

Keywords:
*Advertising/ut [Utilization] Attitude of Health Personnel Drug Industry/ec [Economics] *Drug Industry/sn [Statistics & Numerical Data] *Drug Utilization/sn [Statistics & Numerical Data] Humans Interviews Office Visits *Physician's Practice Patterns/sn [Statistics & Numerical Data] Prescriptions, Drug Questionnaires Time and Motion Studies Turkey *analytic survey/Turkey/doctors/sales representatives/ attitude toward promotion/ gift giving/ quality of information/ quality of prescribing/ATTITUDES REGARDING PROMOTION: HEALTH PROFESSIONALS/ETHICAL ISSUES IN PROMOTION: GIFT GIVING/EVALUATION OF PROMOTION: DETAILING/INFLUENCE OF PROMOTION: PRESCRIBING, DRUG USE/PROMOTION AS A SOURCE OF INFORMATION: DOCTORS

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Far too large a section of the treatment of disease is to-day controlled by the big manufacturing pharmacists, who have enslaved us in a plausible pseudo-science...
The blind faith which some men have in medicines illustrates too often the greatest of all human capacities - the capacity for self deception...
Some one will say, Is this all your science has to tell us? Is this the outcome of decades of good clinical work, of patient study of the disease, of anxious trial in such good faith of so many drugs? Give us back the childlike trust of the fathers in antimony and in the lancet rather than this cold nihilism. Not at all! Let us accept the truth, however unpleasant it may be, and with the death rate staring us in the face, let us not be deceived with vain fancies...
we need a stern, iconoclastic spirit which leads, not to nihilism, but to an active skepticism - not the passive skepticism, born of despair, but the active skepticism born of a knowledge that recognizes its limitations and knows full well that only in this attitude of mind can true progress be made.
- William Osler 1909