Healthy Skepticism Library item: 238

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

Wahlbeck K, Adams C.
Beyond conflict of interest: Sponsored drug trials show more-favourable outcomes.
BMJ 1999 Feb 13; 318:(7181):465

Keywords:
*letter to the editor *analytic survey clozapine drug company sponsored research reporting of results clinical trials INFLUENCE OF PROMOTION: OUTCOME OF CLINICAL TRIALS PROMOTION DISGUISED: CLINICAL TRIALS SPONSORSHIP: RESEARCH

Notes:

Trials comparing clozapine with older antipsychotics in schizophrenic patients were analyzed. Trials sponsored by industry favoured clozapine while nonsponsored trials were equivocal. Sponsored trials reported fewer dropouts for clozapine while nonsponsored trials did not find this.

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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