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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 5022

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

Klein M.
Novel gifts from pharmaceutical companies.
N Engl J Med 1993 May 13; 328:(19):1426


Abstract:

The author has recently been offered a variety of novel gifts from different drug companies. The cost of these gifts is ultimately borne by patients.

Keywords:
*letter to the editor/United States/gift giving/doctors/consumer drug prices/ETHICAL ISSUES IN PROMOTION: GIFT GIVING/INFLUENCE OF PROMOTION: CONSUMER DRUG COSTS Advertising* Drug Industry* United States

 

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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