U.S. Drug Ads to Undergo New Scrutiny
Posted on: Monday, 28 April 2008, 06:00 CDT
Starting next month, drug advertisements in the United States will be reviewed by outside advisers to the Food and Drug Administration.
The FDA's new Risk Communication Advisory Committee said it would meet May 15 in Rockville, Maryland, to discuss how ads provide information to the elderly, children and minorities, according to a notice posted on the agency's Web site. The next day, the panel is scheduled to consider whether television commercials should be required to include a statement encouraging consumers to report side effects of drugs to the FDA, as is already the case for print ads.
Drug makers spend $30 billion a year marketing products in the United States, triple what they did a decade ago, according to a study published last year in the New England Journal of Medicine. Dozens of companies are warned each year over ads that the FDA says mislead consumers to believe that drugs are safer or more effective than proven.
Members of Congress have also questioned the power of ads in swaying public opinion about medicines. Pfizer halted ads in February featuring Robert Jarvik, the inventor of an artificial heart, pitching the best-selling cholesterol pill Lipitor after lawmakers said Jarvik was not licensed to practice medicine. Merck and Schering-Plough suspended television ads for the cholesterol pills Vytorin and Zetia in January amid a congressional investigation into how well the drugs worked.
The FDA announced in June that it would form a 15-member risk communication panel to help improve how the agency shared information with consumers about the products it regulated. The agency said in August that it also planned to study whether positive visual images in television commercials undercut required warnings about side effects and risks.
A gambling advertisement in Britain that claimed online betting would improve sexual prowess and self-esteem has become one of the first campaigns to be banned under tough new laws, following criticism from the country's advertising monitoring agency.
The national press campaign for the online casino Paddy Power was irresponsible in linking gambling to "seduction, sexual success and enhanced attractiveness," the Advertising Standards Authority ruled.
The ad, published in The Times newspaper, featured a dwarf in a limousine flanked by two beautiful women, smoking a cigar and holding up a Champagne glass.
A text accompanying the ad said: "Who says you can't make money being short?"
The standards authority, in a separate ruling, also criticized a television advertisement campaign for gambling that featured "slapstick, juvenile humor that was likely to appeal to children."
The InterCasino campaign also featured dwarfs, this time undertaking stunts like rolling down hills in dice outfits and sliding down bell-ropes dressed as slot machine cherries.
The agency has banned both campaigns in Britain - the first since tougher gambling advertising laws were introduced in September.
Upholding a complaint against Paddy Power, the agency criticized the online casino for linking gambling with sexual success and an improved self-image.
"We concluded the ad suggested this man's 'shortcoming' had been overcome by the wealth he had acquired through gambling and therefore that the ad implied gambling was a way to improve self- esteem or gain recognition or admiration," the ruling said. "We concluded the ad was irresponsible."
It also criticized InterCasino, saying the juvenile behavior in the ads breached the advertising code by appealing to children or young people.
Paddy Power defended its campaign, saying it recreated a famous scene from the 1980s film "Wall Street," starring Michael Douglas as the avaricious banker Gordon Gekko.
InterCasino defended its ads as "gentle slapstick humor reminiscent of old-fashioned routines by Charlie Chaplin or Benny Hill," and not designed to appeal to children.
Source: International Herald Tribune
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