Healthy Skepticism Library item: 2797

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

Miller RR.
Prescribing habits of physicians: a review of studies on prescribing of drugs. Parts IV-VI
Drug Intelligence and Clinical Pharmacy 1973; 7:557-564

Abstract:

(Limited to parts of article dealing with promotion.) There is no relationship between the frequency of visits of sales representatives and the date of introduction of drugs promoted by those representatives. The reason for this finding is probably that physicians with a low frequency of visits are just as vulnerable to the influence of sales representatives as those with more visits.

Keywords:
*nonsystematic review/sales representatives/quality of prescribing/new drugs/INFLUENCE OF PROMOTION: PRESCRIBING, DRUG USE/PROMOTIONAL TECHNIQUES: DETAILING

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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