Healthy Skepticism Library item: 15383

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

Nathan VL.
UPDATE 1-Par Pharma gets subpoena on unit's promotional practice
Reuters 2009 Mar 27
http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssHealthcareNews/idUSBNG39708120090327

Full text:

Says DoJ probing promotional practices for Megace

Says company intends to cooperate with DoJ Par Pharmaceutical Cos Inc (PRX.N) said the United States Department of Justice is currently investigating promotional practices of its unit in the sales of its appetite-stimulant Megace.

In a regulatory filing, the company said it received a subpoena from the department, requesting documents related to Megace, and it intended to fully cooperate with the inquiry.

Megace is a brand name product of Strativa Pharmaceuticals, a division of its unit.

Shares of the Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey-based company closed down 12 percent at $9.85 Friday on the New York Stock Exchange.

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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