Healthy Skepticism Library item: 2844

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

Huse KD.
Medical advertising—the other side of the coin
Patient Management 1975; 4:(6):36-37

Abstract:

If the pharmaceutical industry had not been allowed to promote its products thousands of people whose lives might have been saved by medicines over the past 30 years would have died. Advertising serves to create the sales volume needed to keep the price of drugs down. Being closely connected with the new product from its inception right through to clinical trials, the manufacturer is normally the only prompt and well informed source of information. Medical journals are financially dependent on manufacturers’ advertisements. Thus the main part of the money spent by the industry on journal advertising is devoted to supporting independent information services to medical practitioners. Reputation is a pharmaceutical firm’s main asset and none would wish to detract from this by promoting a potentially dangerous or useless product. No doctor would prescribe on the basis of a superficial recital of the advantages claimed for a product. It is surely desirable that the prescriber should have multiple sources of information about new medicines. Common sense dictates that these must include the company which discovered, developed and tested the drug and whose reputation is tied in with its safety and efficacy.

Keywords:
*analysis/New Zealand/industry perspective/doctors/value of promotion/quality of information/ reputation of company/ ad revenue/ continuing medical education/ consumer drug prices/ATTITUDES REGARDING PROMOTION: HEALTH PROFESSIONALS/ATTITUDES REGARDING PROMOTION: INDUSTRY/INFLUENCE OF PROMOTION: CONSUMER DRUG COSTS/INFLUENCE OF PROMOTION: PRESCRIBING, DRUG USE/PROMOTION AS A SOURCE OF INFORMATION: DOCTORS