Healthy Skepticism Library item: 4454

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

Woollard RF.
Physicians and pharmaceutical companies
Canadian Medical Association Journal 1992; 146:332

Abstract:

Dr. Arkinstall is wrong in thinking that there is no evidence that physicians are influenced by the promotional activities of pharmaceutical companies. In a competitive market industry does not spend large amounts of money on activities that do not provide a return. The Canadian Medical Association guidelines were arrived at through broad consultations not by a bunch of academics as Arkinstall implies. The author offers to meet with Dr. Nixon to discuss things.

Keywords:
*letter to the editor/Canada/guidelines, discussion of/ relationship between medical journals and industry/quality of prescribing/source of information/ETHICAL ISSUES IN PROMOTION: LINKS BETWEEN HEALTH PROFESSIONALS AND INDUSTRY/INFLUENCE OF PROMOTION: PRESCRIBING, DRUG USE

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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