Healthy Skepticism Library item: 6777

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

Medicating for a mirage
International Journal of Risk & Safety in Medicine 1998; 11:1-3

Abstract:

There is a trend in North America to diagnose children with Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder and to treat these children with stimulant drugs. One reason for this trend is the link between the parent-based organization “Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Disorderâ€ and Novartis, the company that makes Ritalin (methylphenidate) the drug most frequently used in treating this disorder.

Keywords:
*editorial/North America/Ciba-Geigy/Novartis/Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder/PROMOTION IN SPECIFIC THERAPEUTIC AREAS: PSYCHIATRIC DISEASES/SPONSORSHIP: PATIENT AND CONSUMER ORGANIZATIONS

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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