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: 9631

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

Robinson B.
Industry moves to control its own sampling destiny
Drug Topics 1986 Aug 4; 130:22


Abstract:

In an effort to restrict the practice of sampling, the modification of the prescription sampling system, whether by legislation or through increased self-policing by the drug industry, is discussed. The Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (PMA) recently pledged to develop a code of sampling practices to head off enactment of a federal proposal to drastically modify the system for distributing samples through company representatives. The House Oversight Committee proposed that samples must be ordered in writing by a physician directly from the manufacturer. The drugs would then be sent to the doctor by mail or by some other common carrier, rather than being delivered by a detail man. The drug company must keep records of all such transactions, which would be available both to state and to federal law enforcement officials. PMA supports most of the antidiversion proposal in the legislation, but rejects the effort to restrict the practice of sampling.

 

  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