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DTC Advertising Harms Patients and Should Be Tightly Regulated

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Peter Lurie
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Extract

Like all interventions in health care, direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising should be evaluated by comparing its risks to its benefits, in the context of the available or potentially available alternatives. The objective, of course, is to realize any unique benefits while minimizing the risks. On balance, the adverse effects of DTC advertising outweigh the still-undemonstrated benefits of the advertising.

DTC advertising must be seen in the context of overall pharmaceutical company expenditures on advertising. In 2005, the industry spent $29.9 billion dollars on promotions (up from $11.4 billion in 1996), of which a relatively small fraction, $4.2 billion (14.2%), was spent on DTC advertising. The percentage spent on DTC advertising has been relatively constant this decade. Promotions to professionals (24.2%) and samples (61.8%) accounted for far larger percentages of total promotional spending in 2005.

Type
Symposium
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 37 , Issue 3 , Fall 2009 , pp. 444 - 450
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2009

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