JAMA: RxP and consumers, industry weigh online ads at FDA hearing

01/26/2010

This week, JAMA highlights the risks the Pew Prescription Project and other consumer safety advocates raised at a recent FDA hearing on the use and conduct of pharmaceutical companies online.

Among the problems posed by direct-to-consumer ads and other consumer intereactions with pharma on the web that were discussed at the hearing, consumers believe there are more safeguards on what can be advertised and how than there are. For instance, RxP Director Allan Coukell cited studies that showed most consumers think only highly safe and effective drugs can be advertised on TV, and that the commercials are screened and approved by regulators beforehand (they're not.)

Consumer advocates like Coukell and Steve Findlay, senior health policy analyst for Consumers Union, argued that the loosening of advertising restrictions that opened the floodgates for drug companies to do consumer advertising on television in the 1990s should serve as a cautionary tale, since there is no evidence such advertising yields any public health benefits, and strong evidence that consumers don't have enough information through online and tv interactions to weigh the risks and benefits of a therapy.

At the hearing, Findlay "argued that drug and device manufacturers should not be able to interact with patients through direct e-mail, text messages, blast e-mail, or chat rooms at all, except on a company's own Web site. Coukell said that such interactions should at least meet the same requirements as advertisements.

'You can call it a social interaction, but when it takes place on the Internet, it lasts for years and it can be viewed by millions of people . . . that kind of social media still functions like a mass-market advertisement,' Coukell said.

Read the full JAMA article here (subscription required).