As a pharmacist, I have noticed an interesting trend over the last several years. In decades past, prescription medications were rarely, if ever, advertised directly to consumers. Instead, drug companies advertised these medications directly to physicans and other health care workers. Now, it is not at all uncommon to advertise these drugs in newspapers, magazines, and other media. I'm not sure this is a good idea. Although it is true that patients should have the right to be fully informed about the medications available for their disorders, and should have the final responsibility for making health care decisions, it seems to me that this trend could lead to patients seeking out particular brand name medications which may not always be appropriate. Recently I saw a billboard that just had the word "ADVAIR" in huge letters and a picture of the medication (an inhaler, used for asthma.) There was no other information offered, not even the disease for which this drug is intended. I can't imagine that this sort of advertisement, similar to just the word "COKE" splashed on a billboard, can help anybody make an intelligent health care decision. Print advertisements, which offer much more information, may be more hepful; if anyone bothers to read all the fine print.

TO BE DEBATED: Direct advertising of prescription medications to consumers; helpful, harmful, or both?

Maybe instead of asking your doctor about advair you can tell your doctor you have asthma. This advertsing is much more harmful in other ways though. If the company spent the advertising money on lowering prices people would be able to afford medicines.

Advertising and marketing and PR are the worst waste of money there is. They are forms of manipulation, especially PR. I am somewhat immune to all 3, having read some good books about them a long time ago. It is out of print, but "the Hidden Persuaders" about advertising is a good read. It opens your eyes to how Madison Avenue manipulates words to mislead you, and once you know how it is done with advertising, you can see it in politics as well.
Seems to me that the drug companies are bypassing the doctors. Perhaps the AMA should look into this.

Try selling a product without it. I am sorry, if you don't market your product you won't be in business long.

I trained as a pharmacist (though I didn't finish), and I was driven to wonder why on earth we let doctors prescribe drugs themselves at all.

Doctors are only cursorily trained in pharmacy and dispensing (although they do cover some of the theory of pharmacology), but are intensively trained in diagnosis. Pharmacists have cursory training in diagnosis, but intensive training of which drugs should be used for which conditions in which formulation, dosage, frequency, and so on.

Since then I've thought that instead of writing a prescription, doctors should write a detailed diagnosis, and leave the expert (the pharmacist) to decide which drug, if any, to prescribe for each patient. I think that would, for one thing, dramatically reduce the vast over-prescription of anti-biotics we see today, driven largely by the patient's feeling that a consultation that doesn't produce a prescription is somehow a failure, and by a doctor's desire to get patient's out of their office and generate an extra chargeable event

(A sound idea, Victoria? You're the practising pharmacist, so you'd know better than me if it would work.)

This sounds like a perfectly plausible way to go, with the proper training for all parties concerned. There are, in fact, programs in this country in which pharmacists are allowed to prescribe medications within a specific diagnosis. In a similar way, if a physician at my hospital writes the order "gentamicin dosing by pharmacy," for example, I am allowed to write the dose and frequency.

Going to this system in a large-scale way would take quite a bit of time, and care would have to be taken to avoid offending the professional pride of any practicioner, but it seems possible.

Which relates back to the subject of this debate. It's hard enough to remain objective about drug selection when drug companies give out all sorts of perks to pharmacists and physicians. It's even more difficult when the patient tells me about an ad that said "Ask your doctor or pharmacist about Happycillin." That patient probably doesn't want to hear that Happycillin is not appropriate.

I have to wonder where this kind of advertising will lead.
There was a time when chiropractors advertised that they could cure kidney ailments, stomach problems, even some cancers. Clearly they were lying but it did get them some new clients.
There was a time that car ads actually told you things about the cars. Now they just pluck at our emotional strings, our imaginary inadequacies.
Madison Avenue is a disease in search of a cure.

I have seen no evidence of pharmaceutical companies making wild claims on the potential benefits of using their product. Between the FDA and the threat of lawsuits, I do not see it occuring in the future. Consumers should certainly be exposed to advertising, not just the physician. How does the consumer know he is not getting a prescription because a doctor is getting a kickback from the drug supplier?

Trying to figure out which emotional inadequacy my '76 Gremlin allieves.

Clearly, you have none.....

How does advertising alleviate this potential scenario? Commercials don't offer detailed technical breakdowns or medical training.

If doctors are providers of health-care then the patients are consumers; and as such they are always right. (At least in a sucessful practice.) What happens when the patient comes in asking for a new wonderdrug that they have seen allows old women to play with their grand-kids and the doctor knows that it might not be the best option? THAT is the risk that is in play with adverts for prescription pharmaceuticals. If someone has their mind set on that drug, they'll find a doctor who will prescribe it.

Direct advertising of prescription drugs to consumers is not permitted here in the UK, although drugs companies tend to find other ways of promoting their products - Viagara for example was launched with some success by simply generating a lot of "news" stories. Pfizer lobbied quite hard to get it allowed as a drug that could be prescribed as part of our National ealth Service (the tax-funded one). Althgouh they failed in that attempt, the publicity ensured that a big chunk of their target market is now well awre of it's existence.

While the big pharmaceutical companies do try to get the rules changed from time to time to allow advertising (and the ad agencies and media owners would certainly like them to be able to), they seem to be just as profitable over here as they are in the USA, so I don't see that it does them too much harm.

Tobacco companies are already talking to the big drug firms because, under EU law, tobacco advertising will be completely banned over the next few years (includin sports sponsorship and other less direct adveritisng).

From a marketing perspective, I think that, in the longer run, losing one promotional tool, which arguably is the most obvious and least targeted anyway, just forces marketers to become more creative - witness the use of press coverage for Viagara.

A connected issue I find more troubling is the drug industry's tendency to invent drugs for conditions that don't yet exist, then create a storm of publicity around the newly "discovered" illness - creating demand for the product. For instance, were any lay people at all aware of "conditions" like ADHD or ADD before drugs like Ritalin were identified as the best treatment for them?

I just get a kick out of the disclaimers after the ads. First, the ads make you feel like something really great can happen with the drug. Then they tell me not to take the drug if I have a history of heart, kidney, liver, stomach, prostrate, ovarian, hypothalamus (like anyone knows what that is), ingrown toenail, or dandruff problems--or you know, a history of breathing for that matter.

But hey, ask your doctor about Valedictorian! It'll CHANGE YOUR LIFE!

This all came about due to deregulation. Gimme back my regulation! These ads are MAKING ME SICK!

I need an aspirin.

One of the major downfalls I see about advertising prescription medecines is that the patients might be influenced to get something they see all the time, but that might not be of any real service to them. They could see ads all over the place for:

Clarinexton! Makes you feel great! Ask your doctor! (woohoo! combination of drug names)

So, the patient goes to their doctor. The doctor admits that while clarinexton might help them some, there's another one that's a lot better. However, the person insists on taking Clarinexton because they never saw a single ad for the other one, and drugs that have more advertisements must be better. So, they get the drug that doesn't really do much for them, and end up feeling miserable, as well as having wasted their money.

If you are that darn stupid, society is better off with you dead.

Well then there are a lot of stupid people because large lobby groups exist because of this problem.

I really don't think labeling people stupid contributes to the debate.

These large lobby groups exist because of their own desire to limit options of others, usually for their own selfish purpose. Consumers need to educate themselves when buying a product. Particularly when it is a product taken for their own health. Advertising is one more source of information, one more additional source of information.

I don't suppose it has ever occured to you that doctors would make decisions based on their concerns over the health of their patients?

And if we're talking about callous and unproductive statements lets not lose perspective here...

Yes, it has. That is the major reason why we need products advertised directly to the consumer.

I think advertising is a symptom of something, rather than the problem. Pharmaceutical companies now gear their entire R&D operations around classical FMCG marketing principles - they try to identify a new market and then corner it, just like a food or confectionery company carries out their NPD.

oops! Jargon alert: R&D = Research & development; FMCG = fast moving consumer goods; NPD = new product development.

Consequently, rather more time and effort (and money) is spent trying to find a cure for baldness than for malaria, even though baldness is not known to be fatal. (At least I hope not!). This is, of course, because there is far more money to be made from vain western men (baldness is relatively uncommon in people with no caucasian ancestry - i.e. it's not a big problem outside the West) than their is from dirt poor Africans, Asians and South Americans.

Not only that, but drug companies fund lots of disease research, increasingly in behavioural areas, conincidentally finding a drug to treat the new condition - the various childhood behaviours that used to be treated with dunces caps and corporal punishment are now "disorders" that require drug treatment.

I'm a leftie, but like most modern socialists, I no longer think that ownership of the means of production is all that necessary. However, I think nationalisation still has some place (most notably for public utilities), and first on my list if I ever get to rule the world (!) are the drug companies, followed soon after by the banks, accountants, and business consultancies.

I have a mixed opinion on this topic. On the one hand, it is a consumer's right to be fully informed on the products that are at her/his disposal. However, people have the tendency to "take on" symptoms that are necessary for prescription drugs--psychopharmaceutical drugs are a perfect example of this. I believe that the amount of advertising should decrease, and hte physician be responsible for suggesting the proper prescription.