… warns Canadians what they’re in for:
Big Pharma is also lobbying hard for the abolition of current Canadian regulations prohibiting direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs. Experience from the United States and New Zealand — so far the only two countries to permit DTC advertising — demonstrates these ads are a highly successful tool for the industry to persuade people to “ask your doctor” for the latest and most expensive products. Tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on campaigns for drugs. Industry calls this “public education” but it’s an education which invariably exaggerates benefits and downplays harms. If/when DTC drug advertising is approved in Canada, the costs to our health-care system will escalate dramatically. At the same time, deaths from prescription pharmaceuticals will become even more common, as will a range of serious side effects.
February 12th, 2011 at 12:39PM
Academic studies of DTC present mixed evidence of its effects. It tends to reduce undiagnosed conditions and reduce drug prices through competition, in addition to having the negative effects mentioned here. Even worse than DTC, however, is physician detailing by pharmaceutical companies, which most studies show leads to almost none of the positive effects, and far more negative effects. Both Canada and the US allow such detailing. Some early evidence of the effects of “academic detailing” in Canada–done through pharmacists and doctors at academic institutions–seems more positive. Whether something like that would work in the tainted academic medical community int he US might be questionable.