Healthy Skepticism Library item: 3463

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

Smith R.
In delicto flagrante
Medical Journal of Australia 1987; 146:322-323

Abstract:

In the last few months in Britain a strong spotlight has been shone on the relationship between doctors and the pharmaceutical industry and a few doctors and companies have been caught in delicto flagrante. The report on the relationship between the medical profession and the industry from the Royal College of Physicians is unduly circumspect.

Keywords:
*news story/United Kingdom/ABPI/Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry/doctors/relationship between medical profession and industry/regulation of promotion/Bayer/Eli Lilly/benoxaprofen/Roussel/Royal College of Physicians/conferences/ETHICAL ISSUES IN PROMOTION: PAYMENT FOR MEALS, ACCOMODATION, TRAVEL, ENTERTAINMENT/INFLUENCE OF PROMOTION: PROFESSIONALISM/PROMOTION DISGUISED: CONFERENCES AND MEETINGS/REGULATION, CODES, GUIDELINES: ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS/REGULATION, CODES, GUIDELINES: INDUSTRY SELF-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