The Medical Freedom Channel

“Expensive advertising of prescription drugs directly to consumers may do little to encourage sales, U.S. and Canadian researchers reported on Monday. They said that even though companies spent an estimated $3 billion in 2005 on such ads in the United States, they did not appear to result in more prescriptions. Most countries ban direct advertising of prescription medications, with the exceptions of the United States and New Zealand. ‘People tend to think that if direct-to-consumer advertising wasn’t effective, pharma wouldn’t be doing it,’ Harvard Medical School’s Stephen Soumerai said in a statement. ‘But as it turns out, decisions to market directly to consumers are based on scant data.’” [editor’s note: Given the fact that overprescribed Pharma-drugs is a major factor in healthcare pricing, this has to be good news to true reformers! - SAT] (09/01/08)