Healthy Skepticism Library item: 6694

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

Mansfield P.
Campaign to combat misleading promotion
INRUD News 1996 Oct; 6:(2):3

Abstract:

The Medical Lobby for Appropriate Marketing has called all its subscribers and supporters to send a protest letter to the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations following its decision about an ad by Parke-Davis in Pakistan for Ponstan (mefenamic acid). The ad promoted the use of Ponstan for children based on inadequate evidence.

Keywords:
*letter to the editor/Pakistan/developing countries/Medical Lobby for Appropriate Marketing/MaLAM/quality of information/IFPMA/International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations/Parke-Davis/Ponstan/children/EVALUATION OF PROMOTION: JOURNAL ADVERTISEMENTS/PROMOTION AND HEALTH NEEDS: PROMOTION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES/REGULATION, CODES, GUIDELINES: COMPLIANCE, SANCTIONS, STANDARDS/REGULATION, CODES, GUIDELINES: INDUSTRY SELF-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