The Misleading Truth About Pharmaceutical Advertisements Is a patient at liberty to diagnose his or her own affliction? If so, are they also qualified enough to know the right medication and take into consideration the drugs adverse effects? With the recent onset of direct to consumer advertising for prescription drugs, this is becoming the case. In 1994, expenditures on direct to consumer advertisements were about twenty-five-million a year. By 1998 that figure changed to about 225 million (Sasich 2).
Turn on the TV, there they are. Open your favorite magazine, there they are again. Listen to the radio, congratulations, you ” ve found another ad for the latest prescription drug.
Rush down to your local physician and life will be perfect, right? Do these advertisements have a place in healthcare, where they could be potentially dangerous? Although educating the public about treatment options is not a bad thing, these advertisements are misleading the public into unnecessary treatment. We first have to look at what an advertisement is intended to do: persuade. Advertisements for prescription medication are not only persuading the general public to get the treatment, they are telling them that they have the affliction. This is increasingly damaging in cases where the affliction is somewhat subjective, such as depression. I’m sure that every normal person has at least once in they ” re life felt sad or depressed. This does not mean that there is a problem that would require medication.
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But advertisements are telling them that they do. If a patient feels this way, take this, everything will be perfect and the patient will unquestionably feel happy. Take this pill and problems will disappear faster than a hamburger at Weight Watchers. This is not the case.
Advertisements are not selling the remedy; they are selling the affliction, and promising that your life’s problems can be whisked away in one convenient little pill. Since the onset of advertisements for medication, the industry has skyrocketed. Pharmaceutical companies are making more profit now than ever before (Sasich 5).
Does this mean that more people are getting sick? Obviously not- it means the industry is prescribing the medication not the doctors.
It means that people are being fooled into their own sickness. The pharmaceutical industry is a supply and demand industry. In order to sell a product, an advertiser or pharmaceutical company must first create demand; this is the first rule of marketing. If no one needs it, no one will buy it. Is this an industry that should be allowed to create this type of demand? To fully understand the suggestiveness in these ads, you have to look at what they imply.
In a magazine ad for Effexor, a drug for depression or generalized anxiety disorder, it clearly states in large wording, “I got my playfulness back.” There is a picture of a woman holding her baby and the wording is in handwriting as if she was the one who wrote it. In the ad she is looking just as playful as the baby in diapers. It makes you think, are you as playful as that baby? You must have depression, as nothing else could possibly explain your sudden loss of child-like playfulness. It is ads like this that are the most disturbing. I think it is relatively established that any normal functioning adult will mature with age. But this ad targets anyone who has grown into a mature, normal adult and stamps it as depression.
If this wasn’t bad enough, it gets worse. In a magazine ad for Celexa, another drug for depression, it clearly states in large print “For depression, Celexa, effective first line therapy with a favorable side-effect profile.” It goes on to list four favorable aspects of the drug. On the back, they are forced by the FDA to list the drug’s adverse effects. There is an entire page in three or four point print arranged in three columns speaking of the drugs adverse effects. If they had listed the adverse effects in the same size print as the four desired effects, they would have to devote the entire magazine to this ad. Yes, the ad is fulfilling the food and drug administration’s requirement to list the adverse effects, but is this really presented in a fair, ethical way? While prescription drug ad’s fair balance is in question, their ability to drive demand isn’t.
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The chief executive officer of Scott-Levin Associates, a pharmaceutical market research and consulting firm, quotes “Our 1995 survey of direct to consumer ads show that they are having the impact sponsors (drug companies) have hoped for. Patients are asking doctors about advertised drugs more often, and they are more likely to get the product they asked for” (Sasich 4).
If you ask a doctor for a certain medication, he won’t give you any medication you don’t need, right? If you agreed, you couldn’t be more wrong. In a 1995 survey, 99 percent of four thousand physicians said they would consider prescribing, or would prescribe a drug suggested by a consumer (Sasich 4).
Since the onset of direct to consumer advertising for pharmaceuticals, roles in the medical industry are shifting. The patient today now has more knowledge about the prescription drugs available to them than ever before.
The problem lies where the information is coming from. Patients are not receiving a fair, balanced view of the medication So where are they getting virtually one hundred-percent of their education? Needless to say, it is biased and suggestive advertisements, not a third party giving the education. This becomes increasingly alarming when you look at a survey that appeared in Consumer Reports magazine. The study was done by a panel of thirty-two medical specialists who evaluated ads in their own areas of medical specialty. They then assessed the accuracy of twenty-eight direct to consumer ads. Findings indicated that only “two thirds of the ads were judged to be factually accurate and backed by scientific evidence.
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But many left out important information or it was only in fine print” (Sasich 7).
The study goes even further to say, “Only half were judged to convey important information on adverse effects in the main promotional text, and approximately forty percent were judged about efficacy and fairly described the benefits and risks in the main promotional text” (Sasich 7).
This is where public education for pharmaceuticals comes from, and patients are being swayed into believing that a certain medication is right for them regardless of its adverse effects. If what you have read wasn’t shocking enough, there’s more.
The doctors themselves are also being misled. When the specialists examined the ads in ten leading U. S. medical journals and checked them for compliance with Federal Food and Drug Administration standards, thirty eight-percent violated five or more FDA standards, and forty percent did not present a fair balance between effectiveness and adverse effects. In addition to this, forty-seven percent of the forty-nine ads did not highlight potential problems (when information was relevant) with specialty populations, such as the elderly. These types of ploys may be an effective tool for marketing, but they have no right to be used for a potentially harmful product.
With regard to my opposition, the case for direct to consumer prescription drug advertising has often been based on the argument that such promotions can educate the public about medical conditions and associated treatments. On the contrary, these advertisements in most cases are doing more deception than education. Virtually all advertisements give the name of the condition treated by the promoted drug, and a majority provide information about the symptoms of the condition. However, very few ads report details about the condition’s precursors, or make any attempt whatsoever to clear up misconceptions about the condition. It is also extremely rare that prescription drug ads provide any information about the drug’s success rate, treatment duration, alternative treatments, and behavioral changes that could enhance the health of affected patients. If public schooling gave the same “education” as these advertisements, we would surely be a nation of idiots.
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Connotative and denotative meanings coexist frequently in advertising. It is important we analyze advertisements on both of these levels to obtain the full intention of them. This is the case with Truth's advertising campaign. Analyzed denotatively, this advertisement appears to be an extremely inefficient anti-smoking campaign, which relies on the use of deception, both in its false "facts" and ...
Direct to consumer prescription drug advertising is clearly presenting information in a biased and misleading manner. The public is becoming increasingly aware of treatments and the role a physician is playing in the process of diagnoses is clearly being undermined. Information about prescription drugs needs to be presented in a clear, straightforward way so the public can be educated about adverse and desired effects of a drug equally. Works Cited Celexa citalopram HBr. Advertisement. Architectural Digest May 2001: 54.
Effexor xr. Advertisement. Architectural Digest May 2001: 129. Sasich, Larry D. “Direct to consumer advertising” Public Citizen June 2001. < web >.
