Healthy Skepticism Library item: 1668

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

Picard A.
Patients requesting advertised drugs
GLOBE AND MAIL 2002 Feb 2

Full text:

Patients who specifically request medicine are nine times more likely to leave a doctor’s office with a prescription than those who do not, according to a new Canadian study.

The drugs patients are asking for are predominantly those they have seen advertised in the media, and doctors are prescribing them even though they may be largely ambivalent about their value, researchers report in this week’s edition of the British Medical Journal. “This is pretty compelling evidence that direct-to-consumer advertising is shifting prescribing practices,” Barbara Mintzes of the Centre for Health Services and Policy Research at the University of British Columbia, said. Her research found that patients request prescription drugs in 12 per cent of physician visits. And 42 per cent of requests are specifically for drugs that are advertised directly to consumers. The study found that 40 per cent of doctors have doubts about the need for the drugs being requested, and that rises to 50 per cent for drugs advertised to consumers. “It tells you that doctors are feeling pressure,” Ms. Mintzes said. The study was conducted in Sacramento, Calif., where pharmaceutical advertising is allowed, and in Vancouver, where it is tightly restricted. Despite the legislative differences, 90 per cent of Vancouver patients reported seeing some direct-to-consumer ads, probably on U.S. TV and in U.S. magazines. Under Canada’s Food and Drug Act, advertising is strictly limited to messages about “name, price and quantity.” The maker of Viagra can, for example, either advertise the name, or urge viewers to seek help for erectile dysfunction, but cannot link the two. Only two countries allow advertising of prescription drugs directed at patients, the United States and New Zealand. Pharmaceutical companies spend $2.5-billion on advertising in the United States each year, and 40 per cent of that is allocated to only 10 products. In Canada, the issue is the subject of a heated debate. A new poll suggests that Canadians support direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs but, at the same time, believe special regulations should be enacted to protect consumers. The poll, conducted by Ipsos-Reid, found that 68 per cent of those surveyed support direct-to-consumer advertising. That figure rises to 85 per cent if the ads are prescreened by a regulatory authority designed to ensure balance and accuracy. Yet, there is some confusion about existing laws, because 53 per cent of those surveyed believe that drug advertising is already legal in Canada. However, most viewers of U.S. television would be regularly exposed to detailed drug advertising. The Ipsos-Reid poll was commissioned by the Alliance for Access to Medical Information, a coalition of media organizations that stand to profit handsomely from changes to current legislation. In her paper, Ms. Mintzes notes that prescription drugs that are advertised in the United States tend to be the newest and most expensive treatments for long-term use. She also cites research that showed that 40 per cent of the increase in drug spending between 1998 and 1999 was attributable to the

top 25 advertised drugs. Doctors wrote 34-per-cent more prescriptions for those drugs, compared with 5-per-cent more for all other drugs.