Healthy Skepticism Library item: 3558

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

Langman M.
The code for promoting drugs.
BMJ 1988 Aug 20-27; 297:(6647):499-500

Abstract:

There are few complaints about violations of the code of practice of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry. This may be because there are few violations or because the code allows plentiful means of exploiting real differences, minor or major, or gently manipulating data to advantage.

Keywords:
*editorial/United Kingdom/ABPI/Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry/regulation of promotion/EVALUATION OF PROMOTION: GENERAL QUALITY OF INFORMATION/REGULATION, CODES, GUIDELINES: INDUSTRY SELF-REGULATION Commerce* Drug Industry* Drug Information Services Great Britain Humans Product Surveillance, Postmarketing

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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