Tell the FDA to end direct-to-consumer prescription drug marketing

On November 1-2, 2005, the US Food and Drug Administration will hold public hearings on direct-to-consumer (DTC) drug marketing.

Commercial Alert is organizing a coalition of academics, health care professionals and community leaders to endorse a statement in opposition to DTC prescription drug marketing.

At the end of October, we will deliver the statement to the FDA and Members of Congress.

We need your support. Please join us.

How to support the campaign against DTC drug marketing:

1) Read the statement opposing DTC drug marketing below.

2) Endorse the statement by filling out the form below. The deadline is Wednesday, October 26 at 8 p.m. EDT. Please tell us precisely how you want to be identified (i.e. your name, title(s), and organizational affiliations(s)).

3) Ask your colleagues and other health professionals to endorse the statement. After you fill out the form, you will have the opportunity to forward the information about this campaign.

Statement on DTC prescription drug marketing:

Direct-to-consumer marketing of prescription drugs should be prohibited.

In 2004, pharmaceutical companies spent more than $4 billion in an onslaught of advertising to promote prescription drugs. This advertising does not promote public health. It increases the cost of drugs and the number of unnecessary prescriptions, which is expensive to taxpayers, and can be harmful or deadly to patients.

For more than half a century, certain drugs have been available to patients only with a prescription, because all drugs, including those that can heal, can also cause harm. Doctors, nurses and other health professionals have the necessary training and experience to help them decide whether drugs are indicated in particular cases. This is why they make the prescription decision, not patients.

Prescription drug advertising pressures health professionals to prescribe particular medications, and often the ones that may be less effective and more expensive and dangerous. This intrudes in the relationship between medical professionals and patients, and disrupts the therapeutic process. It takes up valuable time to explain to patients why they may have been misled by the drug advertisements they have seen.

Prescription drug advertising is not educational. It is inherently misleading because it features emotive imagery and omits crucial information about drugs and their proper use, as well as about side effects and contraindications that can be found on the full FDA-approved label. Drug companies have an inherent and irredeemable financial conflict-of-interest which drives them to exaggerate the positive and minimize the negative qualities of their own products.

At a minimum, direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising should not exist unless accompanied by the full FDA-approved label. Nor should drug ads be allowed to display imagery that is primarily emotive and not educational. Drug ads on TV and radio should be prohibited because they cannot meet this standard for truthfulness.

Prominent endorsers include:

John Abramson MD (Harvard), Marcia Angell MD (Harvard), Thomas Bashore MD (Duke), Alan Cassels (co-author, Selling Sickness), Eugene Corbett MD (U Virginia), Matthew Ellis MD (Washington U), Harvey Friedman MD (U Penn), Donald Gamen MD (UCSF), Victor Grann (Columbia), Peter Green MD (Columbia), Gabriel Gregoratos MD (UCSF), Michael Hershfield MD (Duke), Peter Jensen MD (UCSF), Seth Landefeld MD (UCSF), Barry M. Massie MD (UCSF), Thomas Merigan MD (Stanford), Pamela Ouyang MD (Johns Hopkins), Arnold S. Relman MD (Harvard), George Sachs MD (UCLA), Gary Schwartz MD (Mayo Clinic), Philip Smith MD (Johns Hopkins), Jeffrey A. Stein MD (Columbia), Ellen Weber MD (UCSF), Teresa L. Wright MD (UCSF).