Healthy Skepticism Library item: 1726

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

Fuhrmans V.
European Drug Makers May Utilize More Aggressive Marketing Tactics
The Wall Street Journal 2002 Mar 15
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1016129314345304480.html?mod=googlewsj

Full text:

How would drug makers pitch their medicines to U.S. consumers without the daily rain of prescription rebates, commercials and magazines ads? Try allergy calendars and pollen-count pointers.

In Europe that’s as close as Aventis SA — which makes the allergy drug Allegra — can come to peddling its allergy drug. The French-German company spent 101.6 million euros ($89 million) in ads in 2001 to make Allegra a household name in the U.S. But on its home turf, a European Union ban on prescription-drug advertising prevents Aventis from mentioning the product, even on its Internet pages or brochures.

Drug makers argue that the ban unfairly crimps patient access to information, and thereby full access to drugs. Indeed per-capita retail sales of drugs in certain large European countries are far less than in the U.S.

AstraZeneca PLC’s ulcer drug Prilosec, for instance, racked up 6.85 billion euros in 2002 world-wide sales. Though less populated than Europe, the U.S. contributed two-thirds of the total. Less than one-third came from Europe.

Until recently, drug-company arguments haven’t sparked much change, but as the Internet and the drug industry open new outlets for health-care information, opportunities are emerging that could pave the way for more aggressive marketing tactics.

The biggest opening is a recent set of EU proposals that would allow drug makers to market treatments for AIDS, diabetes and respiratory ailments on their corporate Web sites, patient-requested pamphlets and other company literature.

The European Commission said it chose these diseases to serve as test cases because the treatments for them don’t vary radically from patient to patient; also, patients with these diseases have been the most insistent in requesting information. If approved, the measures could be implemented within two years, and if found to be successful, could be expanded to cover a wider variety of drugs.

The measures fall short of American-style direct-to-consumer marketing, but they are an indication of the pressure the European government is under to loosen restrictions. In addition to the drug makers themselves, European Commission officials say the biggest force pushing the change is the Internet, which already allows consumers to seek information beyond what their doctor tells them.

Still, many consumer groups and European governments, which typically subsidize the cost of most prescription drugs, oppose the plan. They argue that it will merely blow up drug companies’ marketing budgets, cause drug prices to surge and have no appreciable affect on the health of Europeans.

“The benefit of direct-to-consumer marketing of drugs is highly questionable,” says Charles Medawar, director of Social Audit, a consumer-interest group in London. He points out that the total healthcare cost per person in the U.S. in 2000 was 4,253 euros, while the average figure in Europe was 1,896 euros, according to the World Health Organization. Yet the average time in which Americans live a healthy and full life — 70 years — -was slightly less than nearly every Western European country.

Mr. Medawar and other critics of drug advertising argue that patients already can learn about drug products through the media, patient organizations and other groups. Adding direct advertising only helps turn the dialogue between doctors and patients into a prescription request. “It doesn’t help patients seek out the best treatment,” says Erkka Valovirta, a Finnish allergist and president of the European Federation of Asthma and Allergy Associations. “It usually just happens to be the most expensive.”

Critics of drug advertising say that while the efforts boost drug makers’ sales, it also ups their marketing expenses and, eventually, that’s passed on to consumers. “Direct-to-consumer marketing, American-style, is a two-edged sword,” says John Patterson, a senior marketing executive at AstraZeneca. “It’s expensive, and you end up in a spiral of costs because everyone is doing it.” But, he adds, advertising also makes patients more aware of their health and problems, often prompting them to make an appointment to see a doctor and seek treatment when they otherwise wouldn’t. If permitted in Europe, he says, “we’d certainly do it.”

In many ways, the Internet already has made moot a complete ban on drug marketing to consumers. If consumers don’t find information about a certain medicine on a company’s German Web site, for instance, they can easily check it out by clicking to its U.S. Internet address. But that can create confusion because drugs are often named differently and are approved in varying doses from country to country.

“If we close the flow of information in Europe, we just run the risk of letting people get bad or wrong information,” says Lars Almblom Jorgensen, executive vice president at Novo Nordisk AS, a Danish drug maker that specializes in diabetes treatments. “Sure, everyone knows we want to sell more insulin. But we also know the expensive part of treatment is when you have to treat a disease that’s much worse because it wasn’t treated earlier. Information is vital.”

Novo Nordisk stands to benefit if the new EU proposal for loosening restrictions on marketing diabetes drugs passes; Novo Nordisk says it is not sure what new initiatives it would take and is waiting to see what shape the proposals would take if they’re approved.

But, drug makers say, that still doesn’t come close to the power of being able to pitch your own product.

“Even if we get a call from an inquiring consumer, we have to be fairly careful about mentioning any drug,” says Rolf Hoemke, communications director at Aventis’ German unit “Usually we suggest they consult their doctor.”