Pharmaceutical Companies Want YOU to Want Them

January 21st, 2010. By Kristine B

Last week, we saw how pharmaceutical companies target medical professionals in their marketing. This week, Pleading Ignorance looks at how they target you, the patient. 

When you are targeted in an advertisement or marketing plan for pharmaceuticals, that’s called direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA). Now, it may seem a bit silly for pharmaceutical companies to target patients—after all, the patient has to rely on the doctor to first diagnose a health problem and then prescribe the medication. 

But, if you notice, the tv ads encourage you to “talk to your doctor about [insert name of drug here].” They expect that you will see the ad, identify with the list of symptoms or the general health issue mentioned, and go straight to the doctor, demanding you get a prescription for that particular drug. 

So, if consumers are being given the drugs they want and need, is there really a problem with DTCA? 

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL,ncsl.org), there are concerns about DTCA advertising. 

One concern is that the costs of drugs are “soaring” (their word) and becoming more and more difficult for people on a fixed income to afford. The question is, how much of the money spent on prescriptions is going to advertising a particular drug? If drug companies can afford the cost of advertising on tv and in the popular press, then maybe they could spend a bit less on advertising and lower the prices of their drugs, making prescription drugs more affordable for everyone. 

How much are drug companies spending on marketing? According to an study in The New England Journal of Medicine, in 1996, spending on pharmaceutical marketing was $11.4 billion. In 2005, $29.9 billion was spent on marketing pharmaceuticals. 

The thing is, according to the NCSL, this direct-to-consumer advertising appears to be working. An analysis cited at ncsl.org noted that from 1999 to 2000, prescriptions written for the 50 most heavily advertised drugs increased 24.6 percent, while prescriptions written for all other drugs combined rose only 4.3 percent. That’s a massive difference, and all that the drug companies had to do was spend money on convincing you that you need a particular drug. 

Some states are now considering laws or resolutions that affect pharmaceutical marketing, but a big problem is that individual states cannot control national ads, which are regulated by the FDA. The NCSL says that a few states require pharmaceutical manufacturers to disclose their marketing expenses, while 20 more states proposed such legislation in 2008. 

Although that may sound like a huge step in protecting consumers, consider this: According to sourcewatch.org, the only two developed countries that allow direct-to-consumer promotion of prescription drugs are the United States and New Zealand. No other developed countries allow pharmaceutical companies to market to the consumer. 

So, you may wonder if the fuss is an overreaction. After all, as long as consumers are given the medications they need, and feel better because of it, why shouldn’t the pharmaceutical companies be allowed to market to them? 

Critics of DTCA say that the advertising results in an overdiagnosis of specific health problems. Patients will see a commercial that says something like, “Do you feel [insert symptom here]? Talk to your doctor about [insert name of drug here].” The patient will then go and talk to the doctor, who has, coincidentally, just received marketing material about this new particular drug. The doctor will then prescribe the medication. But, the problem is that the patient may not really have the health issue the drug is intended to treat. She may have other health issues not mentioned in the ad or may have no problem at all. 

A further problem that critics note with DTCA is that the ads tend to gloss over the side effects while touting the benefits of the drug. If you’ve seen the tv or magazine ads, you know the side effects, when they are mentioned, are either run together or sped through auctioneer-style, or written in teeny tiny mice type, so they’re easy to ignore—or altogether miss.   

Sometimes, the serious side effects aren’t even mentioned. The New England Journal of Medicine notes that Pfizer was in trouble for a print ad regarding Zoloft because the ad did not include important information regarding the risk of suicidality in patients, even though that risk was included on the drug’s warning label at the same time the ad was being run. 

With DTCA unlikely to end any time soon, pharmaceutical companies will continue to market their drugs to consumers. Whether or not proposed legislation will change the situation remains to be seen.

Tags: Drug Marketing, FDA, Pharmaceutical Marketing, Pleading Ignorance

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