Healthy Skepticism Library item: 15542

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

Quick J, Dé A.
Update to the Direct-to-Consumer Debate: The Risks and Benefits of Pharmaceutical Promotion Across the Atlantic
Public Relations Strategist 2004; 10:(2):29-31
http://www.prsa.org/publications/strategist/

Abstract:

Discusses the risks and benefits of direct-to-consumer (DTC) pharmaceutical promotion in Europe. Practice of DTC
pharmaceutical promotion in the United States; Tools that health care public relations practitioners in Europe employ to
promote products and services; European Commission’s proposal to review European Union pharmaceutical legislation to
ensure better dissemination of pharmaceutical information to the public.

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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