Healthy Skepticism Library item: 11876
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
Chung C.
Drug promotion = Disease promotion?
Choice Voice 2007 Oct 31
http://choicevoice.com.au/cicongress/
Full text:
at the CI World Congress
29-31st Oct 2007
Everytime we receive a drug prescription from our doctors, we trust that they have our best interest at heart. But how would we feel if we realise they have been showered with gifts by the companies that are selling the drugs to us?
One Indian doctor told Consumers International the following:
“On sale of 1000 samples of the drug, get a Motorola handset.
On sale of 5000 samples, get an air cooler.
On sale of 10,000 samples, get a motor bike.”
The ethics of drug promotion remains a controversial topic in consumer debates. While certain types of medicine have an important role for specific treatments, critics argue that companies are increasingly engaging in “disease promotion”.
Ray Moynihan, journalist and author of Selling Sickness, said pharmaceutical companies have always struggled to maintain balance between serving the public and the maximising sales.
“The common ground between public interest and profit maximisation can sometimes be a tiny island surrounded by a sea of conflicts.”
Risk factors are being turned into diseases and healthy people are turned into patients, Mr Moynihan said. He gave the examples of osteoporosis, social anxiety disorder and female sexual dysfunction as classic cases of disease mongering by pharmaceutical companies.
Patient groups are also being influenced by drug companies as they become more reliant on the multi-million industry for funding.
Information provision or marketing stunt?
In the case of social anxiety disorder, Glaxo Smith Kline hired PR company Cohn & Wolf to “cultivate a marketplace” before launching antidepressant Paxil. In the guise of educating the public, the company aimed to boost the sale of Paxil by warning that one in eight Americans suffers from the disease.
The industry’s perspective
Dr Harvey Bale from the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Association (IFPMA) said the industry has developed a code to encourage ethical drug promotion.
The IFPMA is compulsory for members and require that promotion be tied to scientific evidence and facts. Dr Bale argues that drug promotion creates an awareness of particular diseases and treatment options and helps direct patients to appropriate treatments.
“Promotion must not, however, become a tool that causes doctors to deviate from prescribing the best medicine for patients,” Dr Bale added.
Brazil’s experience
Professor Jose Barros highlighted how much the commercialisation of drugs has affected people’s lives.
“Now we can take a pill to solve any type of problem – even to change our lifestyles.”
Pharmaceutical giants have created an appetite for medication to treat chronic conditions like obesity and ADHD in Brazil. Professor Barros said the sale of Ritalin (treatment for ADHD) increased 54 percent from 2003 to 2004, far outgrowing the rate of the condition itself.
