Are These Drug Ads Right for Us, Congress Asks

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Are These Drug Ads Right for Us, Congress Asks

Tue Jul 22,11:29 PM ET

 

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Television drug ads came under the spotlight at a Senate

hearing on Tuesday, with opinion divided over whether the messages serve any

useful purpose beyond boosting sales.

 

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The number of ads like those that show allergy sufferers prancing through

meadows and arthritis patients taking brisk walks has exploded since the U.S.

Food and Drug Administration (news - web sites) relaxed regulations for

broadcast prescription drug ads in 1997.

 

Idaho Republican Sen. Larry Craig, chairman of the Senate Special Committee on

Aging, said he wanted to know if the ads drove up the cost of drugs. " My

suggestion to the pharmaceutical industry is the magnifying glass has just come

out, " he said.

 

Craig, who is not proposing specific legislation yet, said he also wanted to

know whether the ads encouraged people to see doctors, or created demand for

unnecessary and expensive drugs.

 

" We think that direct-to-consumer advertising encourages patients to talk to

doctors about their symptoms ... about their concerns, " Marjorie Powell, senior

general counsel to drug industry group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers

of America, told the hearing.

 

But Dr. Arnold Relman, a former New England Journal of Medicine (news - web

sites) editor and professor emeritus at Harvard Medical School (news - web

sites), said the ads were too short to contain useful material.

 

" My idea of education hasn't the remotest resemblance to the kind of drivel that

they put out in ads, " he said. " Education of patients should be the

responsibility of doctors and government. "

 

Last December the General Accounting Office (news - web sites), the

investigative arm of Congress, found that often an ad campaign was over before

the FDA even warned a company it was misleading.

 

Dr. Janet Woodcock, director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and

Research, said the agency was trying to speed up the warning process. The agency

would issue several more warning letters this month, she added.

 

Woodcock said an FDA survey showed patients were " appropriately skeptical " about

ads, but also often asked doctors for advertised drugs -- and doctors felt

pressured to prescribe them.

 

She said the FDA would work to improve the warnings in ads about side-effects,

which were often " incomprehensible. "

 

Woodcock said promotion to doctors was more important in influencing what drugs

were prescribed. " A patient may come in and request a drug and if the doctor has

samples of another drug, the patient will be started on that drug, " she said.

 

According to the GAO report, pharmaceutical companies in 2001 spent $2.7 billion

on direct-to-consumer ads, but Woodcock said 80 percent of promotional spending

targeted doctors.

 

 

 

 

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