Healthy Skepticism Library item: 6710

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

Rhein RW.
Law enforcement and the Internet superhighwaymen
Scrip Magazine 1996 Dec; (52):18-20, 22
www.pjbpubs.co.uk/scrip/scrhome.html

Abstract:

The Food and Drug Administration sponsored a meeting attended by several hundred representatives of diverse groups to discuss the issues related to promotion over the Internet. Panels chosen from those attending the meeting were asked to focus on how to apply the current law to the situation. One of the problems with Internet promotion is that people may not realize that they are looking at an ad. The FDA maintains that it has no authority to stop consumers from seeking information about unapproved drugs or uses but it can legally prevent companies from giving such information to them. The FDA was interested in companies’ links to journal articles containing information on unapproved uses and whether companies could, or should, control the Internet forums they sponsor. The FDA also wanted to know how a company could tailor its promotional material so that it has fair balance for every audience. A major point of interest was whether a company’s identification as the provider of information should be required on every web page. The last issue discussed was international issues related to Internet promotion as different countries have different regulations about direct-to-consumer advertising, comparative advertising, etc. How can the information banned in one country be kept off an Internet site located in another country?

Keywords:
*analysis/United States/Food and Drug Administration/Internet/ unlabeled indication/ direct-to-consumer advertising/ DTCA/ fair balance(brief summary)/ATTITUDES REGARDING PROMOTION: CONSUMERS/PATIENTS/ATTITUDES REGARDING PROMOTION: INDUSTRY/EVALUATION OF PROMOTION: DIRECT-TO-CONSUMER ADVERTISING/PROMOTIONAL TECHNIQUES: INTERNET ADVERTISING

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Far too large a section of the treatment of disease is to-day controlled by the big manufacturing pharmacists, who have enslaved us in a plausible pseudo-science...
The blind faith which some men have in medicines illustrates too often the greatest of all human capacities - the capacity for self deception...
Some one will say, Is this all your science has to tell us? Is this the outcome of decades of good clinical work, of patient study of the disease, of anxious trial in such good faith of so many drugs? Give us back the childlike trust of the fathers in antimony and in the lancet rather than this cold nihilism. Not at all! Let us accept the truth, however unpleasant it may be, and with the death rate staring us in the face, let us not be deceived with vain fancies...
we need a stern, iconoclastic spirit which leads, not to nihilism, but to an active skepticism - not the passive skepticism, born of despair, but the active skepticism born of a knowledge that recognizes its limitations and knows full well that only in this attitude of mind can true progress be made.
- William Osler 1909