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posted by cmn32480 on Friday August 12 2016, @06:01AM   Printer-friendly
from the pointed-commentary dept.

Dr. Lowe (of Things I Won't Work With" fame) has a blog, In The Pipeline, to which he recently posted an interesting commentary on the topic of direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical marketing:

There's an op-ed in The New York Times that makes tough reading, and it's something that we're going to be seeing more of. The author, Matt Jablow, lost his wife Ronna to non-small cell lung cancer, undiagnosed until a late stage, which is bad enough.

[...] And now, as Jablow says, he gets to watch commercials for Opdivo talking about how it can extend lives, ask your doctor, and so on, and he's (understandably) not happy about it. I'd find it painful, too – who wouldn't?

[...] The op-ed goes on to note the recent failed trial as dashing "the highest of hopes", but those were the highest of hopes for people who haven't been following the biology closely (which includes many investors as well).

[...] Immuno-oncology, in its various forms, has pulled some people practically out of the grave by current treatment standards, and we're going to see more of that in the years to come. But we're also going to see people who aren't helped by it, not yet, and losing them will be harder than ever.

Much more money is spent on pharmaceutical marketing than on research and about 12.5% of the marketing budget is devoted to direct to consumer advertising. Except for the US and New Zealand, the rest of the world does not allow direct to consumer advertising of prescription drugs.

Some US companies, such as Insys Therapeutics, also pay doctors through "speaker programs" and employ former exotic dancers as sales representatives.

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2016/08/09/a-painful-cancer-advertisement
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/opinion/cancer-drug-ads-vs-cancer-drug-reality.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_marketing
http://sirf-online.org/2015/04/24/the-new-killing-it/


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  • (Score: 3, Touché) by rts008 on Friday August 12 2016, @02:16PM

    by rts008 (3001) on Friday August 12 2016, @02:16PM (#387021)

    You must have been focused on the 'exotic dancers'. Understandable. :-)

    But your question was answered in the last sentence of the prior paragraph. (literally the line directly above the exotic dancers)

    FTFS:

    Except for the US and New Zealand, the rest of the world does not allow direct to consumer advertising of prescription drugs.

    And now, back to the strippers!!!

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