Healthy Skepticism Library item: 2915

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

Pharmaceutical industry is ‘reorienting’ its promotional activities
Canadian Family Physician 1977; 23:262

Abstract:

The pharmaceutical industry is interested in getting more involved in continuing medical education. The Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association of Canada doesn’t have any standards in this area. Companies are interested in sponsoring speakers in the field of their products. Unless speakers have a strong bias against the industry, companies will usually sponsor them. Some companies are interested in sponsoring luncheons to reduce the registration fee and increase meeting attendance.

Keywords:
*news story/Canada/ CME/ conference speakers/ continuing medical education/ corporate funding/ Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association of Canada/ guidelines, discussion of/ATTITUDES REGARDING PROMOTION: INDUSTRY/PROMOTION DISGUISED: COMPANY SPONSORED SPEAKING TOURS AND CONFERENCE SPEAKERS/PROMOTION DISGUISED: SUPPORT FOR CME/PROMOTIONAL STRATEGIES: INDUSTRY/REGULATION, CODES, GUIDELINES: CME

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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