Healthy Skepticism Library item: 15436

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

Aronson JK, Barnett DB, Breckenridge AM, Ferner RE, Jackson P, Maxwell SR, McInnes GT, Rawlins MD, Ritter JM, Routledge P, Walley TJ, Webb DJ, Williams D, Woods KL.
The UK's NHS and pharma: need for more clinical pharmacologists
The Lancet 2009 Apr 11; 373:(9671):1251 - 1252
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2809%2960726-1/fulltext

Abstract:

The British Pharmacological Society welcomes the recommendations related to clinical pharmacology in the report of the Working Party of the Royal College of Physicians (Feb 7, p 435). 1 In particular we strongly agree that there is a pressing need for more education in the art of practical prescribing 2 through the science of pharmacology. The spotlight should particularly be thrown on to medical students (whose prescribing education has languished in recent years through a declining complement of c …

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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