Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Fifty-nine percent said the government should restrict pharmaceutical advertising, and 26 percent said they "strongly agree" with such restrictions.
Direct-to-consumer advertising is the bread and butter of Big Pharma, and it is the primary reason the industry has exploded its revenues and influence since 1998. The invention and marketing of fictitious diseases via television advertising has proven instrumental to the drug industry's successful pushing of medically unjustified drugs onto consumers. |
Dr. Timothy Scott
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 It made an equivalent drug (using the "left hand" version rather than a left and right hand combination), added three yellow stripes on one end of the pill, got a new patent, and began what was one of the largest drug advertising campaigns America had ever seen—a campaign that would not be legal in Sweden or in Great Britain. There is no more benefit from the new Nexium than the much cheaper generic forms of Prilosec, but unless AstraZeneca could get physicians to prescribe and patients to request the new Nexium, profits would plummet. |
| There is even a formula that generally applies to drug advertising: Each dollar spent on advertising increases drug sales by $4. So when AstraZeneca spent $ 108 million in one year advertising its purple heartburn pill Prilosec, it increased profits by about $432 million.19 (As Prilosec was going off patent, promotional spending for its substitute "little purple pill" skyrocketed from these already lofty levels—which is another story. See Box #4-2, Would Your Physician Prescribe Nexium?)
Why It Matters
What does it matter if drug companies actively promote their drugs? |
| It will result in drug advertising that will get progressively worse. When the tricks of the trade are no longer used for advantage, the advantage will be sought in even more false advertising claims.
Television networks could use a committee of medical advisors to review all ads for truthfulness. That will not happen. I say so knowing that medical journals are run by physicians who are far more aware of these problems than are television executives, and they will not even monitor advertising claims. |
Jonathan V. Wright, M.D. and Alan R. Gaby, M.D.
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 Part of this negative attitude may reflect the influence of the pharmaceutical industry (which spends heavily on both drug advertising and the funding of educational programs) on medical education. The negative bias of some government agencies, particularly the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), against natural medicine has also likely inhibited many doctors from taking a closer look at the natural approach. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 For one thing, the entire mainstream press is heavily influenced by billions in drug advertising dollars. Some people describe the mainstream news outlets as "drug whores," which is hilariously accurate. You can't seriously expect the major media outlets to offer fair and balanced coverage to a book that's threatening the profit centers of their primary advertisers, can you? Of course not. Trudeau will never get a fair shake in the eyes of the drug-supported press. |
| Congress is contemplating restricting drug advertising, and talk of FDA reform is everywhere. The only thing holding the drug racket in place, in my opinion, is the Bush Administration, which remains strongly pro-drug and continues to enact legislation that amounts to little more than handouts to Big Pharma.
Exposing the lies of Big Pharma
The earthquake has begun, and the success of Kevin Trudeau's Natural Cures book is simply a sign that the public is ready to hear this message. |
Kevin Trudeau
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 The amount of drug advertising is at an all-time high and continues to increase. When you listen to these ads, doesn't it make you smile or laugh when they start rattling off all the side effects of the drugs? However, the marketing techniques are so sophisticated that the drug ads are incredibly effective.
The Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Trade Commission and the pharmaceutical industry have an unholy alliance. The regulating government body should be governing and regulating and protecting consumers from the drug companies' insatiable desire to make more profits. |
Katharine Greider
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 What we're getting from DTC drug advertising is lots of exposure to a relatively small number of drugs—generally speaking, new medicines with huge markets and plenty of patent life left. The Kaiser Family Foundation reports that with thousands of drugs on the market, 60 percent of DTC spending in 2000 went to plug just twenty products. This intensive exposure creates what ad people call "brand awareness." A recent survey by market research firm Insight-Express found that, for example, 74 percent of respondents knew Claritin by name. |
Mike Adams
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 On this topic in particular, you'll have to get your information via grassroots channels, because the mainstream media, which seems addicted to drug company advertising money, refuses to cover the issue with any degree of journalistic integrity.
The FDA becomes a rogue agency
Originally founded with the mission of protecting public health, the FDA has long since sold its soul to Big Pharma, and it now operates primarily as a marketing branch of the very industry it was supposed to regulate. |
Katharine Greider
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| Although magazine ads weren't uncommon in the 1980s, direct-to-consumer (DTC) drug advertising is largely a phenomenon that arose in the 1990s. A1997 FDA rule making it more practical to advertise on television—companies could now substitute a toll-free number or web address for the "small print" details about drug side effects and contraindications—was undoubtedly an important catalyst. Then a few bold and enormously successful campaigns convinced other big players that they couldn't afford to stay on the sidelines. Spending on consumer ads surged from a scant $266 million in 1994 to $2. |
| Still, they extended this right in critical ways, giving the FDA oversight of premarketing clinical trials and establishing requirements for "fair balance" between risks and benefits in drug advertising. Most important, the new laws for the first time required drug companies to demonstrate not only their products' safety but also their effectiveness. This made it far more complicated and expensive to get a drug approved for sale in the United States. The industry howled. In a long interview conducted as part of an FDA oral history project, FDA lawyer William W. |
Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele
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 From 1997 to 2001, TV's share of total drug advertising shot up from 25 percent to 64 percent, and the print media's share went down accordingly.
The shift paid off. A study by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, found that between 1999 and 2000 "the number of prescriptions dispensed for the most heavily advertised drugs rose 25 percent, but increased only 4 percent for drugs that were not heavily advertised. |
| Worse, many people appear to believe that drug advertising is meticulously regulated. A study by researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles and Davis, involving 329 randomly selected Sacramento residents, found that half of the respondents wrongly believed that drug ads are pre-approved by the FDA, and 43 percent wrongly believed that only "completely safe" drugs can be advertised.
Prescription drug ads—few of them screened for accuracy—are as prevalent as commercials for toothpaste and laundry detergent. Turn on the television set any time and you will see a drug commercial. |
Kevin Trudeau
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| This shows how the FDA protects the pharmaceutical industry.
• drug advertising is everywhere. You see drug ads on TV, hear them on radio, and see them in newspapers and in magazines. Drug companies sponsor sporting events and fill our mailboxes with direct mail campaigns promoting their drugs. |
| In the last few weeks there have been organizations now that have shown and proven that drug advertising has been false and misleading. Where is the Federal Trade Commission??? They have yet to take any action against the drug companies for producing false and misleading advertising. Where is the FDA??? They have yet to have taken any action for these drug companies producing what is now proven to be false and misleading advertising. |
The Life Extension Editorial Staff
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 Most doctors get their drug information from the drug company-written PDR, the 80,000 dmg representatives dispatched to doctors' offices, the drug advertising that fills medical journals, dmg company-designed studies, and drug company-underwritten conferences. Many doctors don't hesitate to accept $500 stipends and fancy dinners to receive dmg company-paid presentations.
One concerned doctor wrote to the New England Journal of Medicine: "The conflicts are obvious to everyone in the field. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Even prestigious medical journals (which are funded primarily by drug advertising money, by the way), joined in pumping up the credibility of Vioxx. In November, 2000, the New England Journal of Medicine published an article written by academics who were literally paid by Merck. This article heralded the "benefits" of Vioxx in reducing stomach problems and -- get this -- reducing heart attack rates. |
Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele
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| From 1994 to 2000, spending for consumer drug advertising rocketed from $266 million to $2.5 billion—a whopping 840 percent increase. Sales of prescription drugs shot up from $79 billion in 1997 to $164 billion in 2002. At the present pace, sales will reach a quarter-trillion dollars by 2007. As a result of this runaway spending, overpriced prescription drugs are driving up health care costs for everyone. While drugs account for just 10 percent of the nation's total health care bill, they are the fastest-growing component. |
Stephen Fried
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 The FDA's division of drug advertising and labeling had just approved the revised slogan, and everything was immediately sent to the printer. Blum was concerned that a dramatic boost in advertising would cause even more patients to take the drug, and later the same day, Abbott regulatory affairs got a call from Dr. Bruce Burlington, then the deputy director of the Office of Drug Evaluation II at CDER. Burlington suggested they hold off on the launch, which they did, and consider halting all further promotion of Omniflox.
Four days later, Abbott executives were summoned back to Rock-ville. |
Thomas J. Moore
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 New rules are needed to prevent drug companies from burying warnings about safety in an avalanche of new drug advertising. Consumers should have^he prescription drug equivalent of the second opinion on surgery; patients with medication problems need access to an independent evaluation. The federal government is already in the business of promoting wider use of medication—notably blood pressure and cholesterol drugs. Such programs should be balanced with educational campaigns to curb overmedication and inappropriate prescribing. |
G. Edward Griffin
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 Henry Welch, director of the FDA Antibiotic Division, had been paid $287,000 in kick-backs (he called them "honorariums") that were derived from a percentage of drug advertising secured for leading medical journals. His superiors were fully aware of this conflict of interest but did nothing to terminate it. It was only after the fact was made public and caused embarrassment to the administration that Welch was asked to resign. |
Stanton Peele
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 In other words, drug advertising, like food and cigarette advertising, is a principal element in creating the addictions for which treatment is then marketed. First people are offered emotional relief in a capsule; then they are treated for becoming dependent on a capsule for relief.
The media have been essential in the creation of the addiction treatment industry. Of course, this is a great tradition in the United States: in the nineteenth century, "temperance supporters turned out an enormous quantity of . . . |
Joseph Glenmullen, M.D.
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 Wilkes' group speculated "that the FDA is unable or unwilling to enforce adequately its rules relating to drug advertising. It has been suggested that enforcement is hampered by a combination of budgetary restraints, limited manpower, and lack of regulatory authority to penalize pharmaceutical manufacturers for violating rules." In an accompanying editorial, Dr. David Kessler, then commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said: "As the study by Wilkes and coworkers indicates, the problem of misleading drug advertisements is real.... |
Stephen Fried
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| This threat of a slap on the wrist is apparently how the majority of violations of drug advertising laws are handled. It is an example of the give and take between the agency and industry, in which each side believes it is giving more than it is taking. And of course, the honor code is in effect.
"If the company has additional data on adverse reactions," Blum explained to me matter-of-factly, "we would expect that information to be submitted without having to ask for it."
On cue, I reached down into the box, pulled out a black binder of documents and opened it to Table 7. |
Carl C. Pfeiffer
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 There are many reasons: understaffing in hospitals, lack of interaction between patient and doctor, discrepancies between scientific understanding and clinical use, and the effects of drug advertising, which doesn't always serve the best interests of responsible medical practice. Whatever the cause, it is important for the patient to know that there are viable alternatives from which to choose. Adequate diagnosis, combined with an improvement of diet and treatment with specific nutrients, is the first step toward a more effective and tolerable treatment. |
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