Healthy Skepticism Library item: 2572

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

Bero L.
'Educational' advertisements - I haven't seen one yet!
Western Journal of Medicine 2001 Jun; 174:395

Abstract:

Since perestroika, Russian physicians have been exposed to drug advertisements in medical journals. The ads are characterized by a lack of information on indications, safety, drug interactions, and supporting resources (Vlassov et al. 2001), as is the case in the United States and other countries. Drug companies could link ads to resources with more detailed information. However, they respond slowly or not at all to requests for additional information, which is often from non-peer-reviewed, industry-sponsored studies. Ads are only one aspect of promotion, which is often disguised as education. Vlassov et al. could do a follow-up study analysing journal reprints, pamphlets etc. that are given to Russian physicians. They are likely to be promotional rather than educational, and are likely to fail to provide important information about drugs. Drug ads do not meet the standard of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association, the Food and Drug Administration, or the World Health Organization. Physicians must learn to seek information elsewhere. By critically appraising drug ads and other sources of information, physicians can use their time effectively to keep up to date on drug therapies.

Keywords:
*analysis Russia United States drug advertisements indications International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association Food and Drug Administration World Health Organization EVALUATION OF PROMOTION: JOURNAL ADVERTISEMENTS PROMOTION DISGUISED: PHYSICIAN EDUCATIONAL MATERIAL AND GUIDELINES PROMOTIONAL TECHNIQUES: JOURNAL ADVERTISEMENTS REGULATIONS, CODES, GUIDELINES: INDUSTRY SELF-REGULATION REGULATIONS, CODES, GUIDELINES: INTERNATIONAL CODES

Notes:

Commentary on 21380 (Vlassov et al. 2002)

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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