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: 16381

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

Moynihan R
Drug Safety: Battle over popular bone drug Fosamax bursts into court
BMJ 2009 08 06;
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/339/aug06_1/b3155


Abstract:

A spring evening back in May 1996 was something of a high point for the folks at the global drug company Merck. Three American television networks ran news stories celebrating Merck’s latest blockbuster to fight brittle bones-Fosamax, whose generic name is alendronic acid (or alendronate sodium).

Reporters told tens of millions of viewers that the recently approved drug could cut the risk of a hip fracture in half, and one report described this as “almost miraculous.“1The televangelism proved both efficacious and prophetic: in the years since, the drug became one of Merck’s top selling products, with sales in excess of $3bn (£1.8bn; 2.1bn) annually for several years during the past decade.

Next week, in a district court room not too far away from those same network studios, Merck is scheduled to face the first trial involving its golden goose alendronic acid before Judge John Keenan of the southern district . . .

 

  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