Healthy Skepticism Library item: 17914

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

Ed.
Europe on the brink of direct-to-consumer drug advertising
Lancet 2002 May 18; 359:(9319):1709
http://www.lancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(02)08637-3/fulltext

Abstract:

arlier in May, David Kessler, former commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made a surprising U-turn about direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of prescription-only drugs. According to the May 2 Boston Globe, Kessler, now dean of Yale University School of Medicine, told a drug-industry conference on DTCA that he had been wrong to oppose such advertising. While head of the FDA from 1990 to 1997, Kessler had vigorously opposed DTCA. Soon after he left, the FDA relaxed its rules on DTCA and the floodgates opened, especially for DTCA on television in the USA. Spending on DTCA by the pharmaceutical industry increases year on year in the USA, and reached US$2·5 billion in 2000 compared with $860 million in 1997.
DTCA is only allowed in the USA and New Zealand, but last July the European Commission proposed changes in EU law to allow DTCA for three disease areas-AIDS/HIV, diabetes, and asthma-for a 5-year period followed by a review. This suggested change in the law was driven by DG Enterprise, the Commission’s division with special responsibility for promoting business. Although the proposal was said to have arisen as a result of demand from patients’ groups, the Commission remains unable to show what groups made the demand, why these three disease areas were singled out, and what form the review will take.