Healthy Skepticism Library item: 4246

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: news

Legislation for the sake of legislation: the EC advertising proposal
Health Horizons 1991 Jan
www.ifpma.rog/hhhs/welcome.htm

Abstract:

It is not clear why the European Community needs a Directive on the advertising of medicinal products since there already national codes, the IFPMA code and the WHO Ethical Criteria. The Directive also only seems to apply to information from industry but it should apply to all parties that generate information. The Directive would also allow the withdrawal of marketing authorization for a product if promotion breached provisions of the Directive. This sort of penalty is excessive.

Keywords:
*analysis/IFPMA/regulation of promotion/European Union/ International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations/industry perspective/REGULATION, CODES, GUIDELINES: COMPLIANCE, SANCTIONS, STANDARDS/REGULATION, CODES, GUIDELINES: DIRECT GOVERNMENT REGULATION

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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