Next week, Ted Kennedy, who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions commmittee, plans to mark-up a bill that would limit ads for up to two years after a new prescription drug is introduced, and also require FDA clearance and mandatory disclosures.

A lobbyist for the Association of National Advertisers says his group is putting out an alert to members and calls the Enhancing Drug Safety and Innovation Act of 2007 “one of the most significant pieces of legislation to come before Congress in some time.” Drugmakers adopted a voluntary code of conduct in 2005 that includes many of the same steps in the bill.being proposed in the bill, but Kennedy wants to make it mandatory.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the Pharmaceutical Safety Institute today released a survey of more than 1,700 US adults taken last October, which found that 51 percent believe DTC drug ads encourage them to ask additional questions of their docs. Another 43 percent think the ads provide useful risk info.

In addition, 41 percent reported that DTC ads provide useful info on benefits, and 44 percent believe the ads make them more knowledgeable about treatments they previously didn’t know about. The survey, which was conducted by Harris Interactive, apparently didn’t include any question asking whether there was concern ads may omit important info.

Meanwhile, Henry Waxman had this to say yesterday at the DTC National conference in Washington: “Certainly after a two or three-year period, there can still be (undetected safety) problems, but when it’s a brand new drug and we don’t know the full extent of the problems that can come up with a larger population, we ought to be more careful, because the preapproval system is not failsafe and the postmarketing system is often nonexistent.”

Further reading…
Medical Marketing & Media;
Broadcasting & Cable.[tags]DTC Advertising[/tags]