title: Direct-to-consumer drug marketing: public service or disservice?
abstract: Pharmaceutical industry spending on direct-to-consumer advertising has been increasing rapidly. While the primary goal of direct-to-consumer advertising is to sell drugs, supposed secondary goals include patient education and improved health. However, these benefits of direct-to-consumer advertising are unproved. Moreover, such advertising may create unnecessary tension between the patient and the patient's physician and insurer, and may divert physicians' efforts away from important patient concerns, and toward marketing-generated discussions. On the other hand, direct-to-consumer advertising may lead to patient-doctor encounters that would not have occurred otherwise. Direct-to-consumer advertising should be modified to unambiguously benefit the health-care interests of consumers and patients.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, Winthrop-University Hospital, Mineola, NY, USA.
authors.forename: J T
authors.initials: JT
authors.lastname: Berger
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Kark
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Rosner
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Packer
authors.forename: A J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Bennett
mesh_terms: D000329:Advertising; D003256:Community Participation; D003254:Consumer Advocacy; D004345:Drug Industry / Q000191:economics*; D004992:Ethics, Medical; D006801:Humans; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D014481:United States; D014486:United States Food and Drug Administration