http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/opinion/10spatz.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=better%20drug%20ads&st=cse
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine
Date: Thu, Feb 10, 2011 at 10:19 AM
Subject: re: Better Drug Ads, Fewer Side Effects
To: letters@nytimes.com
To the Editor:
From: barry levine
Date: Thu, Feb 10, 2011 at 10:19 AM
Subject: re: Better Drug Ads, Fewer Side Effects
To: letters@nytimes.com
To the Editor:
For decades, a gentleman's agreement among the Drug Companies in this country limited advertising of prescription drugs to those physicians with the power to prescribe them. That all collapsed with the advent of Minoxidil for hairloss; the vanity market was too lucrative to be constrained by such niceties. Since then, Sales and Marketing have grown to represent more than half of the entire budget of a typical drug company. Most of that money is spent in a zero-sum game stealing market-share back and forth among the same players; all of that is money not available for the pursuit of new, life-saving therapeutics.
Now it is proposed that this can be fixed by punching a new hole in the structure of our anti-trust laws. The precedent isn't encouraging. The Milk Board is right now engaged in foisting mountains of fatty cheese onto our school-children in direct violation of the dietary guidelines of our own Department of Agriculture. Surely this would be a cure worse than the disease?
Barry Levine
2 comments:
Hi Barry,
Hope you're doing well. I share your contempt for DTC advertising by drug firms. But I don't think it's a zero-sum game, because consumers respond to these ads by asking their doctors for the drugs, and some doctors oblige, where in the absence of that patient request they might never have even thought to prescribe that drug or any other one. At least that's my theory; so primary demand, and the national health care cost, increase.
like I said, "most of that is spent in a zero-sum game" Of course there's a need for educating the public. That's part of preventative care. DTC advertising is a very weak way of accomplishing that, albeit vastly profitable to the corporate media.
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