Healthy Skepticism Library item: 9909

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

Shuchman M.
Drug Risks and Free Speech — Can Congress Ban Consumer Drug Ads?
NEJM 2007 May 31; 356:(22):2236-2239
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/NEJMp078080

Abstract:

In 2004, the discovery that Vioxx (rofecoxib) was a risky drug put direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising in the spotlight. The image of Dorothy Hamill lacing up her skates and gliding over the ice despite her osteoarthritis offered a disturbing contrast to the public realization that millions of patients who were lured by the ad into taking Vioxx were risking stroke or myocardial infarction. Now, 3 years later, legislation that – if it is not amended, as some legislators want – would allow the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to block direct-to-consumer ad campaigns for new drugs has been introduced in Congress (see graph). There is popular support for a ban: in a telephone survey conducted in March 2007 by Consumer Reports, 59% of respondents “strongly agreed” that the FDA should ban advertisements for drugs that had safety problems. But some legal scholars believe that such a ban would be overturned by the courts as unconstitutional. If Congress wants to turn its proposals into law, said Robert Post of Yale Law School, it needs to find a different way of approaching the issue…

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