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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 6892

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: report

Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association of Canada
Advertising of prescription medicines to Canadian consumers: PMAC’s position
Ottawa: Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association of Canada 1999 Apr
www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hpb-dgps/therapeut/zfiles/english/consult/wkshd2ca.zip www.canadapharma.org/special-report/adv-position/Advertising-DTC.html


Abstract:

The Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association of Canada believes Canadians should be provided with balanced information about Canadian prescription medicines through appropriately regulated “Made in Canada” advertising. Advertising can raise awareness of effective new therapies and can improve the overall health of the nation by helping Canadians to recognize early symptoms, informing them about potential treatment options. Today, Canadian consumers are seeing pharmaceutical advertising and information on the Internet, through foreign magazines and watching American television programs. In many instances, the information they receive may not apply in Canada, or the drug may not even be approved for use here. The laws regulating the advertising of prescription medicines in Canada were written more than 40 years ago-long before consumers had access to the Internet, and even before television became a standard feature in Canadian homes. The current situation is plainly confusing for Canadians at a time when they are increasingly expected to take an active role in ensuring their own health. The time has come to alleviate this confusion by providing Canadian information to Canadian consumers through Canadian advertising.

Keywords:
*policy statement & guideline/Canada/Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association of Canada/industry perspective/DTCA/direct-to-consumer advertising/ preclearance of advertisements/general public and consumers/attitude toward promotion/value of promotion/source of information/regulation of promotion/ATTITUDES REGARDING PROMOTION: INDUSTRY/EVALUATION OF PROMOTION: DIRECT-TO-CONSUMER ADVERTISING/INFLUENCE OF PROMOTION: CONSUMERS AND PATIENTS/INFLUENCE OF PROMOTION: PRESCRIBING, DRUG USE/PROMOTION AS A SOURCE OF INFORMATION: CONSUMERS AND PATIENTS/REGULATION, CODES, GUIDELINES: AUTONOMOUS BODIES

 

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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