Healthy Skepticism Library item: 4415

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

Rogers A.
EC pharmaceutical directives
Lancet 1992; 339:483

Abstract:

The European Commission has released a directive on drug advertising. Under the new directive “hospitality extended to participants must be subordinate to the main scientific objective of the eventâ€ but there is no indication about how this provision will be enforced. The directive also confirms the European Community wide ban against direct to consumer advertising of prescription drugs.

Keywords:
*news story/ European Union/ drug company sponsored meals and travel/ direct to consumer advertising/ DTCA/ sponsored symposia & conferences/ regulation of promotion/ETHICAL ISSUES IN PROMOTION: PAYMENT FOR MEALS, ACCOMODATION, TRAVEL, ENTERTAINMENT/PROMOTION DISGUISED: CONFERENCES AND MEETINGS/REGULATION, CODES, GUIDELINES: DIRECT GOVERNMENT 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