Healthy Skepticism Library item: 6635

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

Breimer L.
Advertisements for drugs used in disorders with a negative image never feature men
BMJ 1996; 313:883
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/313/7061/883/b

Abstract:

Advertisements in the BMJ for drugs that are used to treat disorders with a negative image, such as mental illness, feature only women. By contrast, when men are used in advertisements they are generally shown in a positive and decisive light.

Keywords:
*letter to the editor/United Kingdom/BMJ/ images in ads/ journal advertisements/ men/ women/EVALUATION OF PROMOTION: JOURNAL ADVERTISEMENTS/IMAGES IN PROMOTION: MEN/IMAGES IN PROMOTION: WOMEN

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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