Is It A Study Or An Ad? Only Pharma Knows For Sure
2 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // June 5th, 2008 // 11:33 am
Open a prestigious and reliable medical journal and you expect to find real studies, yes? Okay, there are also ads for all sorts of items - drugs, for instance. But it should be easy enough to distinguish between the two - unless someone is trying to pull a fast one.
And that’s what Geraint Lewish of New York University and Peter Hockey of Harvard Medical School allege in a letter to the BMJ, in which they complain that two ads were dressed up to look like studies. It was only upon closer inspection did they realize the papers didn’t state funding sources, competing interests, ethical approval or peer-review status.
“We and several of our colleagues began reading them as legitimate BMJ scientific papers and only later noticed the light blue header stating ‘Advertisement Feature.’ We all feel misled. The company paying for these adverts has effectively purchased ‘academic copy’ in a high-impact journal, bypassing the peer-review process and using the reputation of the journal as a Trojan horse to catch our attention…
“These adverts pose a danger because skim-readers may turn to the next page of the journal without realizing that they had just read an advert rather than peer-reviewed research,” they write. “…We are not claiming that the pharmaceutical company that paid for these adverts, nor the BMJ, contravened any regulations…”
But they go on to suggest the only workable solution to what they fear may become a trend “is a complete ban on pharmaceutical adverts in peer-reviewed journals. The publication of these two adverts, despite being calculatedly inconspicuous, has once again reopened the debate about whether medical journals should carry drug advertising.”
Hat tip to Schwitzer Health News blog
Nathan
“…reopened the debate about whether medical journals should carry drug advertising.”
Ok, so we ban DTC advertising. We’ll create drastic limits on sales reps, free handout, and industry sponsored events. And now we’ll ban advertising in medical journals. Mmm… How are doctors supposed to learn about new drugs? Do you think that they are out there reading the primary literature every day? The editors of the journal are the ones ultimately responsible for this embarrassing flap. What kind of editor would allow this kind of ad in their journal?
Rather than talking about the places we SHOULDN’T advertise, let’s reverse the question: Where SHOULD drugs be advertised?
Sam
Nathan, your first two sentences are absolutely correct. And you are correct
that editors should be responsible which means they are either not doing
their job well or have been duped into accepting biased articles.
To answer your question - advertising should be banned e accept for having drug reps seeing physicians, nurse practitioners and pharmacist.
And then these professionals must be astute enough to make their own
decisions as to whether they prescribe the drug or not. It has been my
experience that the better physician does not prescribe a new drug right
away - in many cases 6 months or more. They prefer to use tried and true
drugs that they know very well and have had great success with their patients.
On certain occasion there have been break through drugs and certain
situations that this rule is broken.
I once had a professor of pharmacology who said the following:
If a drug rep tells you how great a drug is - divide by two & subtract 10 for its true therapeutic effectiveness.
If a drug rep tell you their drug has very little side effects - multiple by 10
and add 10 and you would have a better idea of the drug’s number of side effects.
With 50 years of experience, I have found the professor was right about
80% of the time.