Drug Ads Mislead Consumers by Exaggerating Benefits, Downplaying Risks
- From: rpautrey2 <rpautrey2@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2008 09:34:11 -0700 (PDT)
NaturalNews.com cle
October 15 2008
http://www.naturalnews.com/024504.html
Drug Ads Mislead Consumers by Exaggerating Benefits, Downplaying Risks
by David Gutierrez
(NaturalNews) Direct-to-consumer drug ads tend to emphasize the
benefits of drugs and downplay the risks, health experts warn.
"There's currently, and has been for a long time, an unfair balance
between the presentation of the risks and the benefits of these ads,"
said Ruth S. Day, director of Duke University's Medical Cognition
Laboratory.
Day has conducted research demonstrating that while 80 percent of
people who see a TV ad for a drug are able to remember its benefits,
only 20 percent can remember its side effects. Day attributes this, in
part, to the practice of reciting a drug's side effects more quickly
than its benefits, or distracting viewers with simultaneous images and
sounds.
Cardiologist Robert Marshall said that many of his patients are misled
by drug ads.
"We spend a lot of time explaining away why they shouldn't be on
certain medications, or at least should be addressing other things
that should be as important, like lifestyle, diet, exercise, that make
as big or a bigger difference in the long term," Marshall said.
While the ads do not necessarily lie, they may imply that the drugs
work better than they really do.
"In the case of [sleep drug] Lunesta," said Steven Woloshin of
Dartmouth Medical School, "if I don't take the drug, it's going to
take me about 45 minutes to fall asleep on average. If I take the
drug, it'll take about 30 minutes."
"It is frankly fairly clear that the majority of what's happening has
a marketing effect and not an educational effect," said Nancy H.
Nielsen, president-elect of the American Medical Association.
For every dollar spent on direct-to-consumer ads, drug companies make
$6 in sales. Total industry spending on such ads totaled almost $5
billion in 2006, 80 percent more than was spent in 2002. This was a
greater total increase than the industry's investment in the
development of new drugs.
"I think the main problem with directed consumer ads is they don't
give .... the most fundamental information," Woloshin said, "which is
how well does the drug work?"
Sources for this story include: abcnews.go.com.
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