For the New York Times, Cornell psychiatrist Richard Friedman proposes new regulations to make direct-to-consumer drug ads reveal the relative price and effectiveness information that is currently hidden. “Drug companies might legitimately complain that there are many reasons a drug might fail to outperform a placebo besides ineffectiveness: quirks in the design of a trial; patients who were not typical of those with the disease; a dosage that was too low. But then the company should be happy to explain this to the public, since the goal is education, right?”
-
Anything to stop the drug ads on TV would be helpful.
-
Are these drug ads still on TV a lot?
I don’t watch TV anymore. Only movies on Amazon video and my favorite sports shows streamed online.
Hopefully less young people will be exposed to drug ads over time, because cable TV is dying.
I haven’t seen psych drug ads on YouTube yet. Hopefully they will not be allowed on there.
-
I don’t watch cable either BPDT but these ads are sadly still in many magazines as I have discovered while waiting in doctor’s offices. They are even in Prevention Magazine, which is the last place I would have expected to see them.
-
-
-
For psychiatric drugs there should be a warning that there is no clear evidence that the disease the drug purports to treat actually exists.
Why can they advertise Abilify on TV but not cigarettes?
-
That’s a great idea, old head. And direct to consumer drug advertising should be made illegal. Although, it did help me once. A doctor handed me a prescription for Chantix for smoking cessation. I told him I would research the drug, and take it if I thought it would work well for me. If you can imagine, my doctor told me not to research the drug. So I didn’t, but I did read all the adverse effects listed on the commercial for Chantix, and decided it was not right for me.
-
