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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 3226

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

Survey: Consumers don't favor prescription drug advertising
American Pharmacy 1984 Jan 01; 24:(1):10


Abstract:

80% of 950 people attending FDA hearings reported opposing unregulated advertising of prescription drugs. Of these, 60% totally opposed advertising; 20% opposed it unless strictly government regulated; 20% supported DTCA. Alexander Grant, chief of FDA’s Office of Consumer Affairs, concluded that consumers want to participate in policy development as DTCA evolves. The results have been questioned by some FDA officials because only people interested in consumer affairs attended. DTCA opponents feared that it would increase drug prices, mislead the public, disrupt patient-physician relationships, increase unnecessary use of drugs, present an unbalanced picture of risks and benefits, and unfairly favor drug companies with large advertising budgets. Several people noted that the elderly would be at special risk since they are particularly vulnerable to gimmickry and unable to read fine print describing side effects and contraindications. Those who approved of DTCA thought FDA should prohibit ads for brand-name products, drugs for serious conditions like arthritis, depression, or cardiovascular disease (but they felt that ads for easily understood products like vaccines would be acceptable), and new drugs not yet evaluated by physicians. They felt that DTCA would educate patients about specific risks and benefits, familiarize patients about drugs, and lower drug prices by increasing competition.

Keywords:
*cross-sectional study/United States/

 

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Far too large a section of the treatment of disease is to-day controlled by the big manufacturing pharmacists, who have enslaved us in a plausible pseudo-science...
The blind faith which some men have in medicines illustrates too often the greatest of all human capacities - the capacity for self deception...
Some one will say, Is this all your science has to tell us? Is this the outcome of decades of good clinical work, of patient study of the disease, of anxious trial in such good faith of so many drugs? Give us back the childlike trust of the fathers in antimony and in the lancet rather than this cold nihilism. Not at all! Let us accept the truth, however unpleasant it may be, and with the death rate staring us in the face, let us not be deceived with vain fancies...
we need a stern, iconoclastic spirit which leads, not to nihilism, but to an active skepticism - not the passive skepticism, born of despair, but the active skepticism born of a knowledge that recognizes its limitations and knows full well that only in this attitude of mind can true progress be made.
- William Osler 1909