The United States and New Zealand are the only two countries in the world that allow drug companies to market prescription drugs directly to potential patients on TV, radio, print, and social media. Visitors from other countries are often shocked when they see ads in the U.S. which promote expensive drugs with potentially deadly side effects.
In 2022 Robert H. Shmerling, MD, senior faculty editor, Harvard Health Publishing, published, “Harvard Health Ad Watch: How direct-to-consumer ads hook us.” It is an eye-opening expose that ought to have everyone up in arms. Yet, it’s rare that anyone cares or has even heard about it.
Advocates of DTC ads (direct to consumer) tell us that open advertising is a chance to educate people about conditions and treatments, improve health by encouraging consumers to take their medications, raise awareness of possible side effects, and lessen the stigma surrounding certain conditions.
Current federal law does not require the FDA to approve ads before they are used. There are guidelines about what ought to be in a DTC ad, but scant directions about what should not be in the commercials. Deception disguised as an art form can engage facts to distort truth to unaware consumers.
After decades of experience and study, it has been established that DTC advertising often presents incomplete or biased information without open rebuttal. The advertising presents the viewer with joyous people, dancing around with huge smiles, despite their serious health condition – because they use a drug. Consumers are exposed to only one side of the story, the side the drug-makers know will stimulate sales.
Contrary to the claims from the creators of DTC advertising, the ads actually spur consumers to ask for medications they don’t need. Doctors should be rightfully indignant when their patient asks them if drug XYZ is right for them. Who’s in charge of a patient’s treatment plan, the drug maker, the advertising, the consumer, or the trained professional doctors?
DTC ads promote drugs before their long-term safety is known. Not long ago, a new pain relief drug (Vioxx) was pulled from the market due to an unexpected rise in heart attacks and strokes, but not before millions of individuals saw the ads, asked their doctors, and began taking the drug. New drugs are commonly approved, promoted, and sold before deadly side effects are discovered. The new users are similar to lab rats for the drug- maker. They’re a large group of human subjects who pay to be tested,
Of course, advertising increases sales. There isn’t another reason why a large drug-maker would spend the money. It drives up health-care costs without adding health benefits. New drugs are always more expensive than generic drugs that may do the same, or even better, job. Yet that fact is rarely mentioned in the ads. Spending on DTC pharmaceutical ads has grown from $12 Million per year when restrictions on DTC were lightened around 1997, to more than $10 Billion in annual marketing spending today. Who pays for those ads?
The world’s 10 biggest pharmaceutical companies raked in more than $700 Billion in revenue in 2021, and they’re closing rapidly on that Trillion- dollar mark.
According to Harvard’s Dr. Schmerling, “… the main purpose of DTC drug advertising is to sell a product….”, which it does well. As long as DTC ads work to sell expensive drugs, it is unlikely it will stop, regardless of the added health-care costs and potential harms it causes. It’s important to keep in mind that drug-makers are ready with more drugs to treat whatever symptoms arise from the drugs that caused them.
Larry Frieders is a pharmacist in Aurora who had a book published, The Undruggist: Book One, A Tale of Modern Apothecary and Wellness. He can be reached at thecompounder.com/ask-larry or www.facebook.com/thecompounder.