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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 2879

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

McCaffery M.
About those drug ads . . .
Canadian Family Physician 1976; 22:110


Abstract:

The point of the editorial was that instead of complaining about drug advertising physicians should ensure that pharmacology assumes its rightful place as an item of importance in the medical school curriculum.

Keywords:
*letter to the editor/Canada/journal advertisements/quality of prescribing/ medical education/ATTITUDES REGARDING PROMOTION: MEDICAL JOURNALS/INFLUENCE OF PROMOTION: PRESCRIBING, DRUG USE

 

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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