Healthy Skepticism Library item: 14309
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
Silverman E.
FDA Tapped Pharma Consultant For DTC Web Site
Pharmalot 2008 Sep 15
http://www.pharmalot.com/2008/09/fda-tapped-pharma-consultant-for-dtc-web-site/
Notes:
Link to FDA’s “Be Smart About Prescription Drug Advertising” site:
http://www.fda.gov/cder/ethicad/index.htm
Full text:
The agency hired a non-profit that is run by Michael Shaw, an advertising consultant to the pharmaceutical industry, to help design a new consumer campaign about direct-to-consumer advertising, Integrity in Science Watch reports. (Here is the press release).
The FDA’s new website, “Be Smart About Prescription Drug Advertising: A Guide for Consumers,” was developed by EthicAd, a non-profit based in Atlanta that, on its web site, claims to be independent and does not accept industry funding. However, ISW notes the organization is based in the same offices as Shaw Science Partners. The client list includes many familiar big pharma names and the site takes credit for helping to launch numerous drugs, including Viagra, Celebrex, Zoloft, Abilify and Avastin.
The new FDA, which claims DTC advertising “can provide useful information to consumers,” contains examples of legally correct and incorrect ads. ISW contends the info is “more useful to ad designers who wish to avoid running afoul of FDA regulations than to consumers.” But consumers are encouraged to report violations the FDA’s division of Drug Marketing, Advertising and Communication.
Shaw, EthicAd’s executive director, is identified on EthicAd’s website only as a former medical advisor to the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health, a post he held for three years nearly three decades ago, according to ISW. A loophole in Georgia law allows non-profits to incorporate in the state without registering with the IRS, so financial records for EthicAd are not publicly available, ISW reports, adding that Shaw Science Partners reported $1.6 million in revenue in 2006, citing data from manta.com.
In an interview with Integrity in Science Watch, Shaw admitted his firm and other members of EthicAd’s board underwrite the group’s expenses, which enables it to donate its services to the FDA. “All members do work for industry; if not all, almost all,” Shaw tells ISW.
EthicAd’s ‘leadership’ includes general counsel Marc Scheineson, a former FDA official who is general counsel for EthicAd and a partner at Alston & Bird, a Washington lobbying firm with pharma clients; and steering committee members Laura Benson, director of communications at OSI Pharmaceuticals and John Greist, director of Healthcare Technology Systems, which serves the drug industry.
Others include Michael Jenike, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School; Sheldon Preskorn, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Kansas School of Medicine; Michael Weber, a professor of medicine at New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn; and Henry Black, a professor of internal medicine at New York University School of Medicine, each of whom has received either research funding or consulting fees from multiple pharmaceutical firms, ISW reports.
