Healthy Skepticism Library item: 4130

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

Williams EB.
Advertising acyclovir
Lancet 1990; 335:288

Abstract:

Burroughs Wellcome disagrees with Anderton’s interpretations of studies about the effectiveness of Zovirax in preventing complications of shingles and also considers that the pictures in the ads are appropriate.

Keywords:
*letter to the editor/United Kingdom/promotional literature/Burroughs Wellcome/Zovirax/industry perspective/images in ads/EVALUATION OF PROMOTION: JOURNAL ADVERTISEMENTS

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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