Study Finds Problems in Drug Commercials

A study of U.S. commercials for prescription drugs aimed at consumers finds they leave out information on risk factors or alternative treatment.

The commercials also give a rosy picture of what taking a drug can achieve and leave out information on how likely people are to have a given disease, USA Today reported.

In a report in the Annals of Family Medicine, researchers said they recorded pharmaceutical commercials that ran on ABC, CBS, NBC or Fox from June 30 to July 27, 2004. The commercials advertised seven or the 10 top-selling drugs of the time.

Dominick Frosch, assistant professor of medicine at the University of California-Los Angeles, said all the commercials contained some problematic omissions.

I think consumers should be more skeptical of the pharmaceutical ads than some surveys find they are, he said.

David Kessler, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, and a colleague at the University of California-San Francisco, said in an editorial that pharmaceutical companies should have medical standards in their advertising, not the standards and ethics of selling soap or some other consumer product that presents minimal risks.