Name: How Americans got stuck with endless drug commercials
Uploaded: 2017-12-13T05:42:56.000Z
Duration: 9 min 12 s
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In most of the world, this is a strange sight.

It’s a TV commercial for a prescription drug.

On average, 80 of them air every hour on American television.

The American Medical Association, a major group of doctors, has called for a

But there’s a case to be made for them too.

So today we’ll take a look at both sides.

Before the 1980s, prescription drug commercials were unheard of in the US.

Drug companies focused their marketing solely on doctors, and they didn’t want to hurt

When asked by Congress in 1984, if direct-to-consumer advertising should be allowed, one pharmaceutical

And an executive at Schering-Plough, which is now part of Merck, said:

Needless to say, they changed their minds.

At the time there was a larger cultural shift in health care toward empowering patients

to make decisions rather than just listening to their doctors.

Drug Ads started appearing in print publications, but there was still another thing keeping them off TV,

and that was FDA’s regulations at the time.

They were interpreted as requiring ads to include all of the information about the drug’s

risks and side effects, which simply wasn’t feasible to do in

a tv or radio commercial the way it was in a magazine.

There was a bizarre loophole though: The ads didn’t have to mention the drug’s risks,

if they also didn’t mention the disease or condition that the drug was supposed to treat.

Here’s what that looked like — in an ad for Claritin back before it was available

"Don’t wait another minute with Claritin."

"Mr. Wilkin, the doctor will see you now."

So in 1997, the FDA clarified that the industry could run the full drug ads and wouldn’t

have to give ALL the risk information from the label, as long as they included the major

side effects and referred viewers to another source for the rest.

That’s why the commercials direct us to phone numbers or print ads.

Come for the pharmaceutical fine print — stay for “the secret to crisp contact in soggy conditions”

That new FDA guidance removed the main barrier

spending on ads quadrupled by 2004. And now, we know the names of prescription drugs like

we know the names of cars and clothing brands.

"Lunesta, Xanax, Celebrex, Flomax, and HGH."

"Oh and if you have trouble sleeping, Marla has Ambien. I prefer Lunesta."

Drug ads are now the most frequent form of health communication that most Americans see.

So what does that mean for public health?

Are those prescriptions going to the right people?

Or are they going to people who probably won’t benefit from the drug — people for whom the potential

A clever experiment in 2005 tested this by sending actors to real primary care doctors.

Dr. Richard Kravitz: We helped them make appointments.

In half of the visits, the actors reported symptoms of depression.

In the other half of the visits, the actors said they were feeling down

The study authors called this an “adjustment disorder.”

In some visits, the actors mentioned seeing an advertisement for Paxil on TV,

In others, they didn’t bring up medication at all.

And the doctors seemed to take patients more seriously if they mentioned seeing the Paxil commercial.

They were more likely to refer patients to a mental health consultation,

And much more likely to prescribe an antidepressant.

That may be a good thing for those with major depression, who might benefit from an medication.

But it’s more questionable for those with a more temporary condition.

This study, and others, have shown that doctors can be persuaded to broaden the scope of who

And advertisements often seem designed to encourage that.

Take Androgel — it was approved to treat men with hypogonadism: that’s extremely low

testosterone levels due to injury or disease.

But here’s how it was promoted by Abbott: "Millions of men 45 and older just don’t

Remember when you had more energy for 18 holes with your buddies?

Some middle aged men don’t feel like they used to?

A study looking back at 10 years of testosterone prescriptions found that only half had been

diagnosed with hypogonadism in the previous year.

Drug ads give the industry an incentive to make healthy people feel unhealthy.

“Latisse is the only FDA approved prescription treatment for inadequate, or not enough lashes.”

And they contribute to unrealistic expectations about what pharmaceuticals can do.

Well, every single drug comes with risks.

Big ad campaigns are usually for newer drugs, for which not all the risks may be known yet.

In the case of the painkiller Vioxx, a massive ad campaign led millions of people with arthritis

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How Americans got stuck with endless drug commercials

potential

depression

diabetes

disorder