Healthy Skepticism Library item: 10867

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

Kamerow D.
Do adverts subvert? Are bacteria good for us?
BMJ 2007 Jul 14; 335:(7610):0
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/335/7610/0-a

Abstract:

Do drug advertisements (“adverts” in Britspeak) belong in medical journals? In a head to head debate in this week’s issue, Richard Smith, former BMJ editor and long-time critic of big pharma, says yes (doi: 10.1136/bmj.39259.472998.AD). He maintains, perhaps paradoxically, that advertising allows journals to be independent and thus better. Major journals have advertising from many manufacturers and thus no one company can exert undue pressure or influence. Smith’s big concern is one that most readers don’t even think about: the lucrative article reprints that journals sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, largely to the drug companies whose products are evaluated in clinical trials published in the very same journals. Conflict of interest? You betcha.

Gareth Williams, University of Bristol’s medical dean, argues against journal advertising of pharmaceuticals (doi: 10.1136/bmj.39259.481134.AD). He wants drug ads at least vetted for inaccuracy and misleading claims, but he would prefer an outright advertising ban. Doctors are inevitably influenced by the clever words and images stuck throughout their medical reading, and it would be better if prescribing choices were based only on independent data and evaluations…

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