Healthy Skepticism Library item: 4669

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

Arkinstall WW.
Physicians and the pharmaceutical industry.
CMAJ 1993 Feb 15; 148:(4):485

Abstract:

Guidelines from the Canadian Medical Association and other bodies are an insult to the integrity, intelligence and ethics of every doctor in the country. Physicians and the pharmaceutical industry by and large have ethical and appropriate conduct.

Keywords:
*letter to the editor/Canada/guidelines, discussion of/ relationship between medical profession and industry/ Canadian Medical Association/ attitude toward industry/ETHICAL ISSUES IN PROMOTION: LINKS BETWEEN HEALTH PROFESSIONALS AND INDUSTRY

Notes:

Reply to: George Jablonsky, Canadian Medical Association Journal 1993;147:1415.

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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