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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 2353

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

Gold , A .
A drug by any other name
CMAJ 2001 Feb 20; 164:(4):464


Abstract:

In CMAJ, drugs are described by their generic name only. However, many physicians, myself included, often know drugs by the most common proprietary name. It would be helpful if the proprietary name was always included after the first mention of the drug in question. [full text]

Keywords:
*letter to the editor/Canada/ETHICAL ISSUES IN PROMOTION: DRUG NAME/PROMOTIONAL TECHNIQUES: DRUG NAME

 

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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