Maybe not all of Pharma, just the smart ones.
Health Beat reports that a Roche executive acknowledges that “direct-to-consumer promotion [of drugs] was the single worst decision for the industry.”
It’s about time. I’ve said for awhile that this practice needs to be banned, and now at a time when the Obama administration is looking to pass easy, bipartisan initiatives – so-called “low-hanging fruit” – Big Pharma needs all the credibility it could get.
Instead, who can believe their claims of all those dollars spent on research, when multi-million dollar ad campaigns are saturating the airwaves.
Although they’ve realized their folly, it may be too late. The gravy train for pharmaceutical companies is about to come to an abrupt end.
Related posts:
- The waning effect of direct to consumer drug advertising
- Is Big Pharma inadvertently helping out Suzanne Somers?
- Ban direct-to-consumer advertising
- Bill Gates on Big Pharma
- The hired gun
- Implantable defibrillators go direct to consumer
- Big Pharma, the play
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{ 3 comments }
I thought direct to consumer advertising was great. They educated people about medical conditions in 1 minute, and prodded people to get treated.
I never understood the direct to consumer idea. The commercials were SO general sometimes, anyone could be “at risk” and need the medication.
Do any of these apply to you: get sleepy, have a hard time waking up, get hungry at odd times, have wet hair after you shower, work more than 2 hours a day, or like water… then you may suffer from depression.
Sure, as Supremacy Claus said, it could get people into the doctors office – BUT – I wonder if they caused more mistreatment/incorrect usage than anything.
Just my take.
V
http://vansantos.com
. . . prodded to get treated–for what?
I was practicing when it started. First it just wasted my time (talk to your doctor) but gradually over time, the treat everything as a disease mentality promoted by the hucksters took deeper and deeper root, med lists, (and price tags) grew ever longer to the point that rooting out a drug reaction or interaction became more more impractical. Meanwhile, people still age, it still sucks, they still fall apart slowly until they die. Mostly they just take more pills every day half of which are for “problems” that people used to not ever consider worth complaining about.
I am sure somebody somewhere got needed medical care for something serious in the nick of time–but I never met them. What I do see is an entire culture become more and more hypochondriacal which is itself a major detraction from quality of life.
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