In an essay in The British Medical Journal (subscription required), a pair of medical researchers argue that the European Union should learn from New Zealand and reject a bid to allow DTC advertising. They note that New Zealand has spent the last three years considering a ban or restrictions, but industry opposition has stalled the move.

As a result, Les Toop and Dee Mangin warn that DTC advertising in Europe “will not help consumers make better decisions about medicines but will increase the pharmaceuticalisation of health and will expose more of the population to new medicines (many of which offer little benefit over existing medicines) at a time when long term safety is unknown.”

They also note that, “after DTC was rejected in 2002, industry and the commercial arm of the European Commission submitted a new proposal to allow communication between industry and patients that deliberately leaves out the word advertising and replaces the term independence (freedom from commercial influence) with objective.

“Information can be entirely objective and yet still mislead through incompleteness or lack of balance and context. Opponents believe that industry will not, and cannot be expected to, provide balanced, comparative and comprehensive information, and that the proposals amount to advertising by stealth.”

Hat tip to PharmaGossip