Chris Rangel opines on how marketing worsened the Vioxx debacle

However, because of the heavy direct to consumer advertising by Pfizer and Merck a huge number of patients came to their doctors asking for these drugs even if they needed only short term treatment for aches and pains and had no history of and no increased risks for gastrointestinal side effects. If anything, direct to consumer advertising proved that it worked to increase demand for these drugs among all patients. Because of the low side effect profiles of COX2 inhibitors many physicians “gave in” to these patients and wrote prescriptions as long as the patients understood that these medications were no more effective and were much more expensive than the older NSAIDs.

I’ve always been highly critical of DTC marketing. The data that is revealing how COX-2s were overprescribed and overmarketed hopefully will cause consumers to be more skeptical of DTC ads. I can only hope.