Information, not advertising, is what consumers need
Consumers need access to impartial, accurate information
about medicines and not to be faced with partisan product advertising.
That was the message of a meeting of the All-Party
Pharmacy Group held at Westminster on 31 October to consider direct-to-consumer
medicines advertising (DTC).
Setting out the Association of the British Pharmaceutical
Industry's position, Martin Anderson, commercial affairs manager, said
that the pharmaceutical industry was opposed to DTC, but that it also
opposed legal prohibition or control of medicines advertising.
"We're not looking for DTC in Europe," Mr Anderson
said. "We want agreement that companies can make full and objective information
available to the public." Self-regulation was the way forward, he suggested.
Fears that DTC would result in doctors being pressured
by patients to prescribe were not borne out by the experience in the United
States. According to the Food and Drug Administration, patients looked
for more information about medicines as a result of seeing advertisements
and were more confident about taking medicines after having seen advertisements
than they were before. An FDA deputy director had said that there were
no problems associated with medicines advertising.
"People want to have information, and they will
find it," Mr Anderson said. They could already do this using the internet,
but the problem was that the available information was produced for the
American market because of the European prohibition on advertising.
Opposing advertising, but supporting the wider availability
of information, Clara MacKay, principal policy adviser at the Consumers'
Association, said that advertising only benefited patients who had diseases
for which there were profitable treatments.
"DTC can be used to promote products whether or
not they are the best and heavily advertised products are always branded
and more expensive," she said.
In the US, advertising had been linked to poor prescribing
of ACE inhibitors and advertisements for a particular antibiotic had led
to a 23 per cent increase in sales. Some American companies spent more
on advertising than on research and new products which were advertised
achieved 100,000 more prescriptions in their first six months on the market
than products which were not advertised.
"We do not believe that the National Health Service
could stand a fraction of the increase in spend seen in the US," she said.
The financial restraints of the NHS were not compatible with direct product
advertising, but it could empower patients. People did not have enough
information.
Mrs MacKay also criticised the European Union for
the way it was bringing forward proposals to test the liberalisation of
the advertising prohibition. "We have a policy proposal with huge implications
which has been developed without proper consultation," she said. No consumer
groups, health professionals or industry representatives had been asked
for their views.
Summarising, the chairman of the APPG, Dr Howard
Stoate, said: "We all want patients to be better informed. It is a question
of who does the informing. The industry may be honourable and above board,
but it may not give the whole picture."
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