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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 16863

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

de Barros JA
Medicamentos: una contribución a la reflexión  hacia su uso racional
RISAI 2009; 1:(3):1-5
http://pub.bsalut.net/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1027&context=risai


Abstract:

En la sociedad moderna y de consumo, los medicamentos,
además de ser herramientas que pueden
aliviar los síntomas y curar enfermedades, adquieren
de forma cada vez más intensa funciones de tipo
simbólico e incluso mágico. En un marco donde
predomina la lógica capitalista, a esta nueva concepción
de los medicamentos contribuyen de forma
sinérgica el modelo biomédico (que reduce el proceso
salud-enfermedad a la esfera biológica), y la transformación
de los bienes y servicios –incluyendo los
relacionados con el sector salud- en mercancías de
cuyo consumo depende el bienestar, la salud y la
felicidad.

 

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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