Why does the
pharmaceutical industry pour billions into direct-to-consumer (DTC)
ads? One explanation is that drugmakers need a way to market new
products that they are having a hard time selling to doctors—at
least this is what one medical ethicist suggests in the May 2007
issue of The Oncologist.
Noting that more and more
pharmaceutical companies are peddling their products directly to
cancer patients, he writes:
"I have a
hypothesis about which types of oncology drugs are most likely to be
advertised directly to the consumer. I think they are less likely to
be those drugs that have been proven to have benefits, have no
competitors, or are known to be cost-effective. There would be no
reason to promote them, as they are going to be used anyway. In
contrast, it’s those drugs in competitive markets, at the margins of
evidence-based medicine, where pressure from patients resulting from
direct-to-consumer advertising might lead to more prescribing. I
suspect that these marginal drugs will be the very ones that are
advertised most, which is worrisome."
A recent report in The
New England Journal of Medicine confirms that drugmakers tend
to promote their newest drugs DTC: “Notably, nearly all
(17 of 20) advertising campaigns for the most heavily advertised
drugs began within a year after FDA approval of the drug. . .
.which raises questions about the extent to which
advertising increases the use of drugs with unknown safety
profiles.”
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