Healthy Skepticism Library item: 7513

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

Ozdemir V, Williams-Jones B.
Democracy unleashed--unpacking the tooth fairy in drug industry R&D.
Nat Biotechnol 2006 Nov; 24:(11):1324-6
http://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/nbt1106-1324

Keywords:
Biotechnology/economics* Drug Costs Drug Industry/economics* Drug Industry/ethics Drug Industry/methods Health Services Accessibility/economics* Health Services Accessibility/trends Humans Policy Making Public Health Public Opinion Public Policy Research/economics* Social Justice* United States

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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