Healthy Skepticism Library item: 4456

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

Wortis J, Stone A.
The addiction of drug companies.
Biol Psychiatry 1992 Nov 15; 32:(10):847-9

Abstract:

Medical organizations are becoming increasingly dependent on drug company support. The profession should be alert to these concerns and in some instances they will require corrective action.

Keywords:
*editorial/conflict of interest/doctors/relationship between medical profession and industry/ATTITUDES REGARDING PROMOTION: HEALTH PROFESSIONALS/ETHICAL ISSUES IN PROMOTION: LINKS BETWEEN HEALTH PROFESSIONALS AND INDUSTRY/REGULATION, CODES, GUIDELINES: HEALTH PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS Cost-Benefit Analysis Drug Industry/economics* Ethics, Medical* Humans Psychotropic Drugs/economics* Research Support/economics* United States

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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