Healthy Skepticism Library item: 4266

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: news

MaLAM Letter follow up—Can we tolerate Rhone Poulenc Rorer’s claims?
MaLAM Newsletter 1991 Jun

Abstract:

After MaLAM wrote to Rhone Poulenc Rorer about wording in advertising for one of its vaccine’s the company changed the wording but did not order a retraction of the false claims. Although the claims were found to be in breech of the Hong Kong Association of the Pharmaceutical Industry’s Code of Practice in April 1990 the same claims were being made in the Philippines in February 1991.

Keywords:
*analysis/Hong Kong/Philippines/developing countries/company responses/regulation of promotion/ vaccines//MaLAM/Medical Lobby for Appropriate Marketing/Rhone Poulenc/ETHICAL ISSUES IN PROMOTION: COMPANY STANDARDS/PROMOTION AND HEALTH NEEDS: PROMOTION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES/REGULATION, CODES, GUIDELINES: FEEDBACK TO COMPANIES

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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