corner
Healthy Skepticism
Join us to help reduce harm from misleading health information.
Increase font size   Decrease font size   Print-friendly view   Print
Register Log in

Healthy Skepticism Library item: 7509

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

Muir H.
Dicing with death : there's a good chance that the pills your doctor prescribed will do you no good and might even harm you.
New Sci 2006 Jul 29-Aug;

Keywords:
Amines/therapeutic use Anti-Arrhythmia Agents/adverse effects Anticonvulsants/therapeutic use Cyclohexanecarboxylic Acids/therapeutic use Drug Approval Drug Industry Drug Labeling* Drug Therapy/adverse effects* Drug Therapy/ethics Drug Utilization/ethics Drug Utilization/standards* Drug and Narcotic Control Humans Marketing Misoprostol/therapeutic use Postpartum Hemorrhage/drug therapy Prescriptions, Drug/statistics & numerical data Risperidone/therapeutic use United States United States Food and Drug Administration gamma-Aminobutyric Acid/therapeutic use

 

  Healthy Skepticism on RSS   Healthy Skepticism on Facebook   Healthy Skepticism on Twitter

Please
Click to Register

(read more)

then
Click to Log in
for free access to more features of this website.

Forgot your username or password?

You are invited to
apply for membership
of Healthy Skepticism,
if you support our aims.

Pay a subscription

Support our work with a donation

Buy Healthy Skepticism T Shirts


If there is something you don't like, please tell us. If you like our work, please tell others.

Email a Friend








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