False Advertising of Pharmaceutical Research?

Throughout the fall semester I am taking very similar courses, PR Writing, PR Research, and Intro to Marketing. I find it very interesting how similar all three courses are, for instance over the past two weeks each class has discussed research, and the ethical way to conduct your research.

This past week I was doing some research about how advertisers use their research, and everything I came across had to do with ethical advertising and using your research properly. In this article about evidence-based advertising they discuss how pharmaceutical advertising could be very misleading. In short these advertisements are used to bring information to physicians about the drug’s information. 

Most advertisements are to bring awareness to the public, but there are some that want to persuade the physician or user through their research findings. This lead researches to question the quality of these findings, and whether these advertisements led to improper prescriptions.

After the research in pharmaceutical advertisements, they found that most were brief, incomplete, and they inconsistently provided the basic design and statistical information needed to judge the results reported. If there had been more details in the advertisements it would have been more helpful to the reader. (J AmBoard Fam Pract 2001;14:197–200.)

All of these articles surprised me very much. The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) seems to have a tight hold on drug companies, but obviously do not have a tight hold on the types of advertisements they are running. After doing a little more research into drug advertising, I found and the Food and Drug Administration website that says the FDA does not have to review all drug advertisements. It also states that the FDA in most cases sees these advertisements at the same time as the general public sees it.

This type of advertising is very misleading to any consumer. If pharmaceutical advertisers are leaving out crucial information that could harm a user, they are not doing their jobs correctly. These scenarios given in these articles are prime examples that we could be taking the wrong medication, or even being improperly prescribed medication just because the advertiser is not giving full research results.

This goes right along with ethics, and deception. We are taught as PR professionals to try and be as ethical as possible and we are also told not to deceive our consumers or participants. Leaving out information that can be harmful to users in the pharmaceutical world is deceiving your costumer. After reading these article I am beginning to see why it is so important disclose all of your research information, no matter what you are researching; because let’s face it, no one wants to be mislead, and no one wants to be tricked.