As Barack Obama is sworn in as President of the United States, big pharma is gearing up for a multi-million dollar advertising campaign to improve it's image.
As well as facing projected growth figures in the low single digits, drug companies are bracing themselves for the combined prospect of a President apparently committed to healthcare reform and Democratic-controlled Congress sympathetic to his aims. The aim of this new media blitz is to reposition themselves as supporters of Obama's vision for universal healthcare coverage.
As recently reported in the New York Times, the industry has also announced a voluntary commitment to stop distributing certain kinds of gifts to doctors. This 'self regulation', they freely admit, is an effort to pre-empt much stronger regulation by a newly empowered Food and Drug Administration.
Many are hoping that President Obama does not, as his predecessors have done, capitulate in the face of the seemingly infinite resources of the pharma lobby and that any overhaul of the US healthcare system includes an end to the unethical promotion of pharmaceuticals currently so commonplace.
Tuesday, 20 January 2009
Big pharma on the offensive as Obama is inaugurated
Labels:
Gifts to Doctors,
pharmaceutical companies,
promotion to doctors,
self-regulation,
unethical marketing,
United States,
USA
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I have a petition to stop all advertising of prescription drugs on television. I would like everyone to sign it who believes doctors should be the ones deciding what to prescribe, not the patient.
http://www.gopetition.com/online/26241.html
Stop Television Prescription Drug Ads
Published by Marlene B. on Mar 18, 2009
Category: Health
Region: GLOBAL
Target: U.S. Congress
Background (Preamble):
Statistics prove prescription drugs are 16,400% more deadly than terrorists. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in 1998, a report finds that prescription drugs kill about 106,000 Americans each year – that’s three times as many as are killed by automobiles—making prescription drug death the fourth leading killer after heart disease, cancer and stroke.
Last year Journal of the American Medical Association puts death from all drugs, illegal and prescription, second only behind car accidents as a cause of death.
The rise in deaths coincides with the direct marketing of prescription medication to the public. Prescription drug sales have soared nearly 500 percent since 1990.
The pharmaceutical industry is a multi-trillion dollar business. Companies spend billions on advertising and promotions for prescription drugs. Pharmaceutical companies claim their drug ads are "educational" to the public. The public seems to genuinely believe that drugs advertised on TV are safe, in spite of the plethora of side effects listed. Every day it’s estimated 2,500 teens abuse a prescription pain killer for the first time.
The White House Office of National Drug Control policy had been planning to unveil an ad campaign to target prescription drug abuse by teens. It is time to stop this form of advertising by the pharmaceutical companies.
Petition:
We, the undersigned, request that Congress and the Federal Communications Commission stop all television advertising of prescription drugs.
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