A
New Website Against DTC Prescription Drug Advertising
Today, Commercial Alert launched the website StopDrugAds.org
(http://www.stopdrugads.org), devoted to ending direct-to-consumer
prescription drug advertising in the United States.
The purpose of the website is to educate the public
about the dangers of prescription drug advertising,
and to mobilize thousands of Americans to voice their
opposition to the ads.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is accepting
public comment on DTC prescription drug advertising
until February 28th. The stopdrugads.org website says
that is not the proper role of drug executives to tell
Americans what drugs to buy, and it encourages visitors
to send comments to the FDA in opposition to DTC drug
marketing.
In effect, drug companies are practicing medicine
without a license, and that should be illegal, said
Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert.
We've got to halt prescription drug advertising before
the next Vioxx tragedy happens.
On October 27th, Commercial Alert released a statement
from 211 professors from U.S. medical schools that “direct-to-consumer
marketing of prescription drugs should be prohibited.” The
statement’s endorsers include prominent medical
school professors from Harvard, Johns Hopkins, University
of Pennsylvania, Columbia, Stanford, Yale, Duke, University
of California, San Francisco and other top medical
schools, along with two former editors-in-chief of
the New England Journal of Medicine.
The American public has little trust for the pharmaceutical
industry, and believes it should be more closely regulated.
According to a Harris Poll in November, only 9% of
American adults believe that the pharmaceutical industry
is “generally honest and trustworthy.” Fifty-one
percent believe that the pharmaceutical industry “should
be more regulated by the government.”
Commercial Alert is a nonprofit organization whose
mission is to keep the commercial culture within its
proper sphere, and to prevent it from exploiting children
and subverting the higher values of family, community,
environmental integrity and democracy. For more information,
see our website at: http://www.commercialalert.org |
