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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 2987

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

Chapman S.
Advertising and psychotropic drugs: the place of myth in ideological reproduction.
Soc Sci Med [Med Psychol Med Sociol] 1979 Nov; 13A:(6):751-64


Abstract:

Advertising as a form of mass communication emanating from established capitalist enterprise, reproduces ideology conducive to the preservation of the social order that sustains that enterprise. Using selected advertising of psychotropic drugs from Australian medical journals as case studies, three main areas in which ideological statements are made are examined. These are: doctors and doctoring, patients and notions of mental illness, and the psychotropic drugs often used in mediation between the two. The supportive argument used is that imagery used in advertising is essentially mythical. A framework for decoding meaning in advertising is provided.

Keywords:
*analysis/Australia/journal advertisements/psychotropic drugs/images in ads/myth/EVALUATION OF PROMOTION: JOURNAL ADVERTISEMENTS/IMAGES IN PROMOTION: MYTH/PROMOTION IN SPECIFIC THERAPEUTIC AREAS: PSYCHIATRIC DISEASES Advertising*/standards Australia Drug Industry/methods* Drug Industry/standards Humans Periodicals/standards Physicians/psychology* Psychology Psychotropic Drugs*

 

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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