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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 11660

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

Garlick W.
Head to head: Should drug companies be allowed to talk directly to patients? NO
BMJ 2003 Jun 12; 326:(7402):1302
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/326/7402/1302-a


Abstract:

…The pharmaceutical industry claims to have a direct part to play in educating the public and improving patient information (as set out in the aims of its current “My Medicine” campaign for patient friendly information). On the surface, this may seem attractive. After all, the industry produces the drugs we use. But the Consumers’ Association believes that such an approach would only serve to undermine, not strengthen, patient information…


Notes:

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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