Healthy Skepticism Library item: 9539

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

Nonprescription drug industry urges more prescription-to-nonprescription switches
American Journal of Hospital Pharmacy 1989 Aug; 46:1512

Abstract:

Drug products sold over-the-counter (OTC) in other countries but available only with a prescription in the United States are tabulated. The Nonprescription Drug Manufacturers Association (NDMA) has plans to press the Food and Drug Administration to switch the status of certain drug products from prescription to nonprescription. The Association argues that self-medication with OTC products is the largest, and most cost-efficient, component of the nation’s health-care system.

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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