Healthy Skepticism Library item: 3997

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

Vreeland LN.
The selling of Retin-A
Money 1989 Apr; 75-80, 84, 87

Abstract:

After a press conference that presented the results of research financed by Ortho Pharmaceutical (a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson) that showed that Retin-A could reverse the effects of aging, sales of the drug nearly doubled in seven months. At that point, Retin-A had not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for this indication. This report comes to a number of conclusions: 1) the industry increasingly bypasses clinical physicians and promotes new prescription drugs directly to consumers through the popular press; 2) company publicity efforts, backed by million-dollar budgets and aided by public relations firms, sometimes take place long before the drug has been approved by the FDA for the use the manufacturer is encouraging; 3) medical researchers, who have become more and more dependent on pharmaceutical-company funding, potentially compromise their objectivity by accepting fees from drug firms for consulting and for helping to stage persuasive public-information events; 4) these close relationships between pharmaceutical companies and doctors are rarely disclosed to the public; 5) the popular press doesn’t probe the important qualifiers that lie behind nearly all press releases based on medical research; and 6) the FDA is overburdened, understaffed and shackled by laws that have failed to keep pace with the industry’s increasingly sophisticated publicity techniques.

Keywords:
*feature story/United States/Ortho/Johnson & Johnson/Retin-A/dermatology/journalists/drug company sponsored research/Food and Drug Administration/FDA/regulation of promotion/ press conferences and releases/ preapproval promotion/ETHICAL ISSUES IN PROMOTION: LINKS BETWEEN HEALTH PROFESSIONALS AND INDUSTRY/INFLUENCE OF PROMOTION: JOURNALISTS/INFLUENCE OF PROMOTION: PRESCRIBING, DRUG USE/PROMOTION AS A SOURCE OF INFORMATION: JOURNALISTS/PROMOTION DISGUISED: APPOINTMENTS AND RETAINERS/PROMOTION DISGUISED: PRESS CONFERENCES AND PRESS COVERAGE/REGULATION, CODES, GUIDELINES: DIRECT GOVERNMENT REGULATION