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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 6454

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

Scott DK, Ferner RE.
'The strategy of desire' and rational prescribing.
Br J Clin Pharmacol 1994 Mar; 37:(3):217-9


Abstract:

The most effective use of medicines is based on the rational analysis of their benefits, safety and costs. the most effective marketing of medicines may replace an appeal to reasoned analysis by an appeal to unconscious desires. This paper discusses the conflict between these two forces, and the need to redress the balance of their influences on prescribing.

Keywords:
*analysis/United Kingdom/quality of information/quality of information/quality of prescribing/promotional literature/Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry/ABPI/EVALUATION OF PROMOTION: GENERAL QUALITY OF INFORMATION/INFLUENCE OF PROMOTION: PRESCRIBING, DRUG USE/REGULATION, CODES, GUIDELINES: DIRECT GOVERNMENT REGULATION/REGULATION, CODES, GUIDELINES: INDUSTRY SELF-REGULATION Advertising Cost-Benefit Analysis Ethics, Pharmacy Humans Prescriptions, Drug*

 

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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