Healthy Skepticism Library item: 1555

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

Silverman E.
Biz Buzz: Actress's on-screen personalities collide at conference
New Jersey Star Ledger 2005 May 11;

Full text:

There are misconceptions … and then there are misperceptions.
Later this month, Lorraine Bracco, the actress who plays a psychiatrist on “The Sopranos” and is also a spokeswoman for Pfizer’s Zoloft, an antidepressant, is scheduled to speak at the annual gathering of the American Psychiatric Association.
Bracco plans to appear alongside Michelle Riba, the group’s president, and is expected to tout antidepressants as useful medications, despite some controversy.

The drugs now carry warnings about links to suicide in youngsters, a move that occurred after it was revealed some drug makers failed to disclose clinical-trial data.

One industry critic said the pairing sends the wrong message by giving the impression the psychiatric establishment is too close to drug makers. “It validates our argument that the APA is an organ of the manufacturers,” Vera Sharav of the Alliance for Human Research Protection said.

But James Sculley, medical director at the APA, which recently launched a Web site to encourage doctors to consider prescribing antidepressants, disagreed. He said Bracco was chosen because she “makes the issue more human. But we’re not paying for her to come. She’s not going to promote any drug during her talk. And we do not embrace any particular drug company.”