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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 18866

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

Iheanacho I
Reading up on drug companies: there in black and white
BMJ 2010 Oct 12; 341:
http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c5626.extract


Abstract:

Say you wanted to keep a casual eye on what the drug industry was up to: where could you look? For the enthusiast, there’s a myriad trade publications, websites, news feeds, and blogs to cater to this need. These, though, may hold little appeal for healthcare professionals, who’d rather remain amateurs in this particular area.

They might try instead general medical journals. But coverage there tends to be tangential and, sometimes, distorting, through its selective focus on individual drugs or conditions. And where the industry, …

 

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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