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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 3977

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

Schwartz TB.
Endorsement of "patient promise" program.
N Engl J Med 1989 May 18; 320:(20):1354-5


Abstract:

In an advertisement in the Journal Dr. Rubin Bressler, head of the department of internal medicine at the University of Arizona is endorsing Searle’s “patient promise” to reimburse patients for the cost of any Searle medication that “fails to achieve the desired therapeutic benefit.” His statement clearly suggests that the elderly should use Searle products. The author wonders if Dr. Bressler received any benefits for this endorsement and what kind of precedent it sends.

Keywords:
*letter to the editor/United States/Searle/endorsements/PROMOTIONAL TECHNIQUES: ENDORSEMENTS Advertising* Drug Industry* United States

 

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Cases of wilful misrepresentation are a rarity in medical advertising. For every advertisement in which nonexistent doctors are called on to testify or deliberately irrelevant references are bunched up in [fine print], you will find a hundred or more whose greatest offenses are unquestioning enthusiasm and the skill to communicate it.

The best defence the physician can muster against this kind of advertising is a healthy skepticism and a willingness, not always apparent in the past, to do his homework. He must cultivate a flair for spotting the logical loophole, the invalid clinical trial, the unreliable or meaningless testimonial, the unneeded improvement and the unlikely claim. Above all, he must develop greater resistance to the lure of the fashionable and the new.
- Pierre R. Garai (advertising executive) 1963