Healthy Skepticism Library item: 4131

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

Zaini J.
Pushing children’s vitamins
HAI News 1990; (51):1-2, 11

Abstract:

A survey in Malaysia shows that children’s vitamins are being aggressively marketed. The growing obsession with vitamins is causing far-reaching effects including: distorting national health priorities; wasting limited individual and family resources; encouraging harmful beliefs about health care; and encouraging harmful practices.

Keywords:
*analysis/Malaysia/developing countries/children/vitamins/quality of information/ health and healthcare/INFLUENCE OF PROMOTION: HEALTH AND HEALTH CARE/PROMOTION AND HEALTH NEEDS: PROMOTION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

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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