Healthy Skepticism Library item: 1740
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
Gordon C.
TV drug ads are tough to swallow
The Ottawa Citizen 2002 Mar 30
Full text:
You only have to watch the prescription-drug commercials on American TV to appreciate them not being on Canadian TV.
But they probably will be. The private broadcasters are pushing for them and, while the federal government seems to be firmly opposed, the Liberal party has a way of remembering where its campaign contributions come from.
The broadcasters are fairly upfront about their reasons for wanting the ads: They would bring in $240 million a year.
The health minister, Anne McLellan, has good reasons to resist. “One has to question whether you are getting better medical outcomes,” she told reporters this week.
She could perhaps have been a bit more dynamic in her choice of words. But the point is there. American viewers who see the drug commercials pressure their doctors to prescribe the drug, McLellan noted.
“The doctor tells them there is no increased or enhanced effectiveness by providing the drug advertised, but the patient is very persistent once they see the advertisement.”
Which, of course, is precisely what the advertisers want.
A study done in the United States says that direct-to-consumer prescription-drug advertising (that is, advertising that is targeted at consumers rather than doctors) tripled between 1996 and 2000. So the ads work.
The big question is what they do when they work. The Canadian Medical Association is skeptical. Dr. Henry Haddad, the CMA president, said this week that “when you look down south, you have the impression they look at drugs as a consumer good, rather than something that has a health benefit. They banalize the fact of taking drugs.”
Dr. Haddad is particularly critical of the type of ads, such as the current TV commercial for Viagra, that loosely proclaim a lifestyle advantage for a drug.
Other doctors worry about the creation (if it does not exist already) of a hypochondriac society, in which people turn to drugs to solve all their problems.
In the public policy area, there is concern over the increasing cost to the health system of an upsurge in drug prescriptions.
Those who advocate allowing prescription-drug advertising in Canada say that none of those things will necessary happen, particularly if doctors prescribe intelligently. Drug advertising is merely a form of information, and governments should not withhold information from the people.
That kind of pitch finds an eager audience in the media, where the public’s right to know is a mantra, and if serving the public’s right to know happens to bring in big advertising dollars, hey …
In a Citizen series on prescription drugs published earlier this year, Paul Jones, publisher of Maclean’s magazine, summed up the attitude of media ownership, saying, “We just don’t like to see commercial speech arbitrarily restrained.”
He added: “Is there any other area of my life where I allow the government to tell me what I can and can’t know?”
Similar sentiments have been expressed by, among others, the editorial board of this newspaper, and they are persuasive enough until you look at the commercials.
Note, first of all, that prescription-drug advertising in magazines is most often accompanied by a page of small print, outlining possible side- effects, detailed descriptions of proper usage and lists of the types of people who should not take the drug, either because of their medical condition or other medicines they might be taking.
The television commercial doesn’t do that. It may get around it by making no specific pitch, as in the Viagra commercial, which just shows a happy man dancing around for reasons we can all figure out, and with no side-effects mentioned. Or it fuzzes the pitch, as in the case of that hair-loss product, with vague claims accompanied by suggestions to “see your doctor.” You can imagine how happy doctors are with that.
Most insidiously, as in the case of some commercials seen on American TV, the fine print is recited sotto voce by an announcer while pictures of healthy-looking people climbing mountains dominate the screen.
Only by a huge leap of the imagination could such advertising be construed as giving information.
If prescription-drug commercials were to be allowed in Canada, a serious level of regulation would be necessary to prevent such excesses. And who needs more regulation? It’s much easier, and smarter, just to keep the current policy.
