Healthy Skepticism Library item: 4620

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: media release

Scheetz A.
Variation of drug ads numbers in JAMA
2006 May 8

Notes:

Ralph Faggotter’s Comments:

In this letter,
Anne Scheetz describes how she tries to find out why some doctors, interestingly, are ‘lucky’ enough to get a lot more pharmaceutical ads with their copy of JAMA than others.

Full text:

Due to our mail carrier’s error, in May 2004 I received 2 copies of the same
JAMA issue—my own, and the one belonging to another doctor in the
neighborhood (whom I’ve never met). I was surprised to find that his copy
was a lot thicker than mine. The text turned out to be the same in both; but
his copy contained 85 full pages of ads, while mine contained 16 pages. In
both the advertised drugs seemed to be of all kinds.
I wrote a letter to the editor of JAMA detailing these facts and asking for
an explanation. (I also asked around among my friends, all of whom were as
surprised as I was; no one knew how this would come about.) I got a call
from someone at JAMA who said they would not publish my letter because it
did not respond to any JAMA article. This person professed not to know how
the difference in ads came about; speculated that it had to do with whether
or not I was an AMA member; or who paid for my subscription; or my specialty
(I’m an internist and geriatrician). I found all of these explanations
unsatisfactory; and said I thought the matter was of the greatest interest;
how did the fact that I don’t see drug reps, and tend not to prescribe the
newest drugs, get translated into the number of pages of ads in my copy of a
journal. She promised to pursue the matter with the editorial staff and to
get back to me, but she never did.
Since the word count was 134 words, they could not decline to publish it
because of its length.
I did not know of the existence of these data bases; obviously the JAMA
staff must know, and chose to conceal the fact when it was directly relevant
to my question.
I will forward this article to my similarly ignorant friends.

Anne Scheetz, MD, Chicago IL