Does drug advertising need more government oversight?
August 23, 2007 – 12:30 pm
I was reading the August 6th edition of Brandweek and there were a couple articles in there that are worth a mention.
One article about Johnson & Johnson’s Ortho Evra Patch and another article about GlaxoSmithKline’s new drug, Alli.
There was also an article a few days ago on MSNBC about the significant growth in drug related advertising.
“.. direct-to-consumer advertising, which increased by 330 percent during that period, still only makes up 14 percent of the nearly $30 billion the companies spend to promote their drugs, according to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine.”
For a little background, the regulations changed about 10 years ago that allow drug companies to advertise directly to U.S. consumers.
The total amount spent promoting medicines is 2.6 times what it was in 1996.
I know several people who work in pharmaceutical research and the amount of time and resources spent developing and getting drugs approved by the FDA is mind boggling. With the liability and risk involved with launching a new drug, I understand why its so expensive.
The MSNBC article mentions that although the amount spent on advertising has grown significantly, the amount the FDA spends on policing advertising has not tracked with the increase in spending. Only about 1/3 of the TV ads are reviewed, compared to about 2/3 of the TV ads in 1996.
An article showed up on Yahoo News about how the FDA is going to study TV ads more carefully.
“The FDA says it plans to study how 2,000 people react to television drug ads to determine whether they have an overwhelmingly positive impression of products despite audio warnings about potential side effects.”
The following quote struck me as asking for too much from the drug companies. You don’t see the same risks for high speed cars, such as, if you push this 400 horsepower engine to the max, you will get a speeding ticket, or some bogus warning like that.
“If advertisers were really interested in getting information about drug risks out, they’d show pictures of those problems, but you almost never see that,” said Dr. Sidney Wolfe of the advocacy group Public Citizen, which frequently criticizes drug industry marketing.”
So I ask you, where is the line? Does there need to be more regulation around drug companies advertising to consumers? I agree that the warnings need to be monitored and clearly communicated, but there are plenty of warnings on things like cigarettes and that does seem to have an impact on sales.
Are we a lawsuit happy culture?
Who has the responsibility for researching the drugs?
Since most of these drugs require a prescription from your doctor, doesn’t the doctor and pharmacist own some of that responsibility to educate the consumer as well, since they are the ones providing and dispensing the prescription?
Technorati Tags: drug advertising, FDA, pharmaceutical research, TV, drugs
One Response to “Does drug advertising need more government oversight?”
I frankly don’t think the drug companies should be allowed to advertise controlled substances to the general public. I can’t tell you how many times my sister, who is a medical assistant, deals with patients scheduling appointments to get that new drug they saw on TV.
Spend the bucks on educating the doctors who are going to prescribe the stuff.
Ultimately, doctors should decide who candidates for certain medications are, not patients telling the doctors what they want to take.
Just my $.02
By Anthony J. Davis, D.C. on Aug 27, 2007