Healthy Skepticism Library item: 9042

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

Stange KC.
Time to Ban Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Marketing
Ann Fam Med 2007 Mar-Apr; 5:(2):101-104
http://www.annfammed.org/cgi/content/full/5/2/101

Abstract:

“It is time to ban direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of prescription drugs. The current US system of pharmaceutical company self-monitoring and Food and Drug Administration oversight is not working. Moreover, it cannot realistically be expected to work. A ban is needed to protect the public’s health and the quality of health care.

The research study by Frosch and colleagues in the last issue of Annals1 opened a larger discussion and ties to other evidence that point to this conclusion.2,3 Their research discovered that in actual practice, DTC ads provide biased educational material and emotional appeals that promote drugs over healthy alternatives.1 The online discussion synthesized in the Annals On TRACK feature reveals a complex effect of DTC ads on perceptions, medication prescribing, and adherence.2

Other research has raised concerns about the biases4–6 and public health effects7–9 of DTC advertising. A recent systematic review of the limited evidence found that DTC advertising is associated with patients’ request for specific drugs and increased prescription of advertised drugs without benefits in health outcomes.10 DTC ads have the potential to increase the appropriateness of prescribing among those who have a condition for which medication is underprescribed,11,12 but the (potentially adverse) effect on the many who see the message but who do not have the condition is inherently harder to measure.7,13

Together, these sources show an emerging public health tragedy that is happening so surreptitiously that we are blind to the magnitude of the encroaching effect on the quality of health care and the health of Americans…”

Keywords:
Advertising/direct-to-consumer • drug industry • doctor-patient relationship • public health

Notes:

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