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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 1800

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

Weissman JS, Blumenthal D, Silk AJ, Zapert K, Newman M, Leitman R.
Consumers' reports on the health effects of direct-to-consumer drug advertising.
Health Aff (Millwood) 2003 Jan-Jun; Suppl:
http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/reprint/hlthaff.w3.82v1


Abstract:

We conducted a national telephone survey about health care experiences associated with direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of prescription drugs. Among the 35 percent of our sample who had a physician visit during which DTCA was discussed, 25 percent received a new diagnosis, of which 43 percent were considered high priority according to authoritative sources. More than half also reported actions taken by their physician other than prescribing the advertised drug. Despite concerns about DTCA’s negative consequences, we found no differences in health effects between patients who took advertised drugs and those who took other prescription drugs.

Keywords:
Adult Advertising* Aged Drug Industry/economics* Drug Utilization/statistics & numerical data* Health Care Surveys Humans Middle Aged Patient Participation* Physician's Practice Patterns/statistics & numerical data* Physician-Patient Relations Prescriptions, Drug/economics Prescriptions, Drug/statistics & numerical data Questionnaires Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't United States

 

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Far too large a section of the treatment of disease is to-day controlled by the big manufacturing pharmacists, who have enslaved us in a plausible pseudo-science...
The blind faith which some men have in medicines illustrates too often the greatest of all human capacities - the capacity for self deception...
Some one will say, Is this all your science has to tell us? Is this the outcome of decades of good clinical work, of patient study of the disease, of anxious trial in such good faith of so many drugs? Give us back the childlike trust of the fathers in antimony and in the lancet rather than this cold nihilism. Not at all! Let us accept the truth, however unpleasant it may be, and with the death rate staring us in the face, let us not be deceived with vain fancies...
we need a stern, iconoclastic spirit which leads, not to nihilism, but to an active skepticism - not the passive skepticism, born of despair, but the active skepticism born of a knowledge that recognizes its limitations and knows full well that only in this attitude of mind can true progress be made.
- William Osler 1909