Healthy Skepticism Library item: 11568

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: news

Mantone J.
Advertising Allies Turn Tide for Pharma
The Wall Street Journal Health Blog 2007 Sep 21
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2007/09/21/advertising-allies-turn-tide-for-pharma/

Full text:

A provision to empower FDA to yank consumer drug ads was stripped from the final version of an FDA bill, which was passed yesterday.

But it wasn’t Big Pharma that carried the day on the revision; it was the Gucci-loafered lobbyists for media and advertising firms.

The WSJ reports the pharmaceutical lobby had other priorities with the bill. But media and advertising groups were sweating about regulators cutting back on what has become a dependable stream of revenue. In the U.S., drug makers represented the tenth-biggest advertising category in 2006, spending $5.3 billion, or 3.5% of the total $149.6 billion U.S. ad market.

Also, some in the advertising industry were concerned that giving FDA broad powers to block ads would lead to other government ad restrictions. “People just looked and they were incredulous,” says Harry Sweeney, chairman of Dorland Global Corp., a health marketing and communications firm that is a unit of Huntsworth PLC. “You’re getting into a very slippery-slope area.”

Still, safety problems with heavily advertised drugs–such as Merck’s Vioxx–spurred supporters of the restrictions to act. House and Senate lawmakers introduced FDA bills that would allow the FDA to impose a moratorium on ads that raised safety concerns, which was a recommendation in a September 2006 Institute of Medicine report.

Eventually, the idea for a moratorium was defeated. In its place, came provisions that allow the FDA to make recommendations for changes to ads and give the agency power to impose fines for false and misleading ads. (The fines will need court approval.)

Although the pharmaceutical industry wasn’t lobbying against the moratorium, it’s not complaining with the way things turned out.

“Many thought this was the moment … when moratoriums and other restrictions on DTC (direct-to-consumer ads) would flourish,” says Rich Buckley, a VP at AstraZeneca, whose purple heartburn pill Nexium and cholesterol-fighter Crestor have been heavily advertised. Instead, he says, consumer drug marketing “is here to stay.”