corner
Healthy Skepticism
Join us to help reduce harm from misleading health information.
Increase font size   Decrease font size   Print-friendly view   Print
Register Log in

Healthy Skepticism Library item: 14855

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

Hogarth S, Javitt G, Melzer D.
The current landscape for direct-to-consumer genetic testing: legal, ethical, and policy issues.
Annu Rev Genomics Hum Genet 2008; 9:161-82
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.genom.9.081307.164319?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%3dncbi.nlm.nih.gov


Abstract:

This review surveys the developing market for direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic tests and examines the range of companies and tests available, the regulatory landscape, the concerns raised about DTC testing, and the calls for enhanced oversight. We provide a comparative overview of the situation, particularly in the United States and Europe, by exploring the regulatory frameworks for medical devices and clinical laboratories. We also discuss a variety of other mechanisms such as general controls on advertising and consumer law mechanisms.

Keywords:
Advertising as Topic Europe Genetic Techniques/economics Genetic Techniques/ethics* Genetics, Medical/economics Genetics, Medical/ethics* Genetics, Medical/legislation & jurisprudence* Humans Marketing of Health Services Public Policy United States

 

  Healthy Skepticism on RSS   Healthy Skepticism on Facebook   Healthy Skepticism on Twitter

Please
Click to Register

(read more)

then
Click to Log in
for free access to more features of this website.

Forgot your username or password?

You are invited to
apply for membership
of Healthy Skepticism,
if you support our aims.

Pay a subscription

Support our work with a donation

Buy Healthy Skepticism T Shirts


If there is something you don't like, please tell us. If you like our work, please tell others.

Email a Friend








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