Healthy Skepticism Library item: 2914

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

Advertising reform
Journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners 1977; 27:387-389

Abstract:

An agreement between the British government and the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry will now provide the Department of Health and Social Security with greater control over promotion and will ensure that every full advertisement includes information about costs and adverse effects.

Keywords:
*editorial/United Kingdom/Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry/ABPI/journal advertisements/regulation of promotion/ATTITUDES REGARDING PROMOTION: CONSUMERS/PATIENTS/ATTITUDES REGARDING PROMOTION: HEALTH PROFESSION STUDENTS/ATTITUDES REGARDING PROMOTION: REGULATORS AND GOVERNMENT/PROMOTION AS A SOURCE OF INFORMATION: HEALTH PROFESSION STUDENTS/PROMOTIONAL TECHNIQUES: DIRECT-TO-CONSUMER ADVERTISING/REGULATION, CODES, GUIDELINES: DIRECT GOVERNMENT REGULATION

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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