Healthy Skepticism Library item: 7492

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: news

Hendrick D.
TV drug ads influence doctors' orders: New survey heightens debate: Do prescription drug commercials merely inform? Or do they prompt people to play doctor?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution 2007 Jan 9
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/printedition/2007/01/09/meshads0109a.html

Abstract:

scads of ads over the holidays for the popular sleeping pill. And TV ads made Cada Kilgore realize his restless leg syndrome isn’t just a “new” illness dreamed up by clever drug company marketers.

Like millions of others in the Atlanta area and around the nation, Riddell and Kilgore — thanks to advertisements on TV and in print — know much more about their medical problems than ordinary folks did in the past. And they aren’t shy about telling their doctors what drugs they think they need.

In a survey coming out today in the February issue of Consumer Reports magazine, 78 percent of primary-care physicians said their patients ask for drugs they’ve seen advertised on TV. The surveys, which involved 335 doctors and 39,090 people around the nation, found 67 percent of doctors concede they sometimes grant their patients’ requests.

Consumer Reports urges consumers to “ignore drug ads.” The magazine cautioned that the pharmaceutical industry “spends billions of dollars a year trying to get you to pester your doctor for expensive, new brand-name drugs.”

Dr. William Plested, president of the American Medical Association, a cardiovascular surgeon in Santa Monica, Calif., said there are risks when patients play doctor, which millions do daily with the click of a mouse.

Advertised pills aren’t magic bullets, said Dr. Pablo Stolovitzky, an Atlanta ear, nose and throat specialist who doesn’t completely agree with Consumer Reports’ recommendation for consumers to ignore the ads. Some ads can inform consumers, he said.

Patients in Stolovitzky’s office often ask for Nexium because they’ve seen TV ads, and “if I feel it will serve the purpose of my diagnosis, I’ll do it,” he said. “But sometimes people are significantly disappointed that what they think they need wouldn’t help. We like patients who are informed, but there’s a lot of misinformation out there.”

Which may explain why the Consumer Reports study found that 41 percent of doctors feel patients are poorly informed, even those who haul in pages of research like legal briefs.

Riddell, 65, of Dacula, was seduced by the flutter of Lunesta’s butterflies in TV ads, so she asked her doctor for a prescription to replace the sleeping pill she was on. “What I was on just wasn’t working,” she said.

Kilgore, a 54-year-old attorney, said seeing TV ads touting Requip for restless leg syndrome offered him some psychological comfort about having a medical problem few people have ever heard about.

“My legs don’t actually twitch like the woman in the TV ads, but I just feel like I have the heebie jeebies,” said the Buckhead man. “I never imagined that so many people had this restless leg thing.”

Broadcast and print ads accounted for 94 percent of the $4.2 billion spent in 2005 on direct-to-consumer drug ads, according to a recent report by the federal Government Accountability Office. It said that such ads are increasing each year by about 20 percent.

Which means consumers can expect to see even more of Lunesta’s butterflies, happy Viagra couples and grandpas blowing soap bubbles after toking on Advair.

“The ads have completely turned around the old relationship when the doctor was this godlike character and you used to go in there all deferentially,” said Robert Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University.

Dr. Sandra Fryhofer, an Atlanta internist and past president of the 120,000 member American College of Physicians, said ads to consumers leave her a little queasy.

The federal Food and Drug Administration is charged with regulating direct-to-consumer ads, but Fryhofer wants stricter limits. “My feeling, and this is the opinion of the American College of Physicians, is that the FDA should impose serious limits on the pharmaceutical industry’s ads to make sure consumers aren’t misled.”

Carrie Smithson, a 24-year-old Alpharetta mother of three who suffers from a form of depression, an illness for which many drugs are touted, is grateful for the ads.

“I saw an ad in a women’s magazine and it had a girl with all her different mood swings, and I said, ‘This is me to a T,’ “ Smithson said. Now she’s taking Lamictal and is feeling better.

“I wouldn’t have had a clue without the ad,” she said.

SPENDING ON PHARMACEUTICAL ADS Top 10 prescription drugs by advertising dollars spent in 2005 include the following:

Nexium (heartburn) …………..$223.7 million

Lunesta (sleep aid) ………….$215.1 million

Vytorin (cholesterol)…………$155.2 million

Crestor (cholesterol)…………$141.5 million

Advair (asthma)………………$136.9 million

Nasonex (allergy)…………….$124.2 million

Flonase (allergy)…………….$111.1 million

Lamisil (toenail fungus) ……..$110.2 million

Plavix (blood thinner) ……….$110.2 million

Cialis (erectile dysfunction)….$110.1 million

Source: TNS Media Intelligence