12/3/2001
Prescription-Drug Advertising Triples
The amount of money that
pharmaceutical companies have spent on television
advertisements has more than tripled -- to $2.5 billion
-- since 1997, the year they were first allowed to run
drug advertisements, the Christian Science Monitor
reported Nov. 30.
The increase in drug advertisements renews a controversy
on whether pharmaceutical companies should bypass doctors
and focus directly on consumers. Some experts are calling
for new restrictions on drug advertisements and more
research.
One
new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation found
that 30 percent of Americans have asked their doctors
about a drug they saw advertised. Of those, 44 percent
received a prescription.
"More research needs to be done on whether those
prescriptions would have been written anyway. Are they
actually making people healthier? Were they medically
necessary or not?" said Mollyann Brodie of the Kaiser
Family Foundation. "I don't think enough is known about
that piece of the puzzle."
More than 3 billion prescriptions are written each year
in the United States. However, it has not been determined
whether television ads are having an impact on the growth
in prescription rates.
"There is a critical public-health issue here, and that's
whether it's leading to an increase in inappropriate
prescriptions," said Steven Findlay, director of research
at the National Institute for Health Care Management in
Washington. "We can't answer that question."
Blue Cross and Blue Shield, one of numerous critics of
direct-to-consumer drug advertising, said the ads are
leading consumers to ask for and obtain drugs that they
might not need, or are less effective than another
treatment.
For instance, Blue Cross and Blue Shield noted that sales
of the drug Vioxx for arthritis patients have increased
since the company started advertising. But clinical
studies have found that 95 percent of people diagnosed
with arthritis would be fine taking ibuprofen for a few
pennies a day, compared with Vioxx, which costs a few
dollars a day.
In a recent
study by the National Institute for Health Care
Management, the 50 drugs most heavily advertised in
2000 accounted for nearly half of the increase in
spending on pharmaceutical drugs.
The pharmaceutical companies claim that there is no
evidence that links the advertising to increased sales.
The companies say that newer drugs are selling because
they're better and more effective.
"Surveys of both patients and physicians show that
direct-to-consumer advertising leads patients who would
otherwise go without medical care to seek treatment for
the first time," said Alan Holmer, president of the
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA),
the industry's trade association.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is currently
designing two studies to address issues related to direct
to consumer advertising. The agency also is expected to
propose new guidelines for such advertising within the
year.
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