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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 4203

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

Lexchin J.
PAAB: a lesson in self-government.
CMAJ 1991 Apr 1; 144:(7):844-5


Abstract:

The author describes problems with the Pharmaceutical Advertising Advisory Board and maintains that it is fundamentally flawed.

Keywords:
*letter to the editor/Canada/ Pharmaceutical Advertising Advisory Board (Can)/ regulation of promotion/preclearance of advertisements/REGULATION, CODES, GUIDELINES: AUTONOMOUS BODIES/REGULATION, CODES, GUIDELINES: COMPLIANCE, SANCTIONS, STANDARDS Advertising/standards* Drug Industry/standards* Professional Staff Committees*

 

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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