Healthy Skepticism Library item: 14212

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

Several lawsuits target prescription drug Seroquel
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 2008 Aug 28
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08241/907556-53.stm

Full text:

Several people filed federal lawsuits against AstraZeneca here yesterday, claiming that the anti-psychotic drug Seroquel was marketed improperly and can lead to diabetes.

Seroquel was initially approved to treat schizophrenia but is now used, according to the lawsuits, for off-label uses, like depression, insomnia and autism.

The lawsuits claim negligence, fraud and intentional misrepresentation.

“The marketing and promotion efforts of AstraZeneca, through its advertisers and sales force, overstated the benefits of Seroquel and minimized, downplayed and concealed the risks associated with this drug,” the lawsuits contend.

Five such lawsuits were filed by Specter, Specter, Evans & Manogue.

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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