Direct To Consumer Advertising
...with regard to standard practices and the status quo in day to day business operations. For instance, 1) Can doctors that sit on boards of the companies act impartial (to the consumer) when they make decisions to financially back research/drugs of the pharmaceutical company they represent and remain ethically compliant? The number of doctors, researchers and writers who accept numeric compensation from pharmaceutical companies is significant. This became apparent when in 1992, a group at UCLA attempted to conduct a study that would involve a group of medical experts as participants. In selecting the medical experts, they established a criterion whereby anyone who had received more than $300 in compensation over the past two years from a member of the pharmaceutical industry would be excluded from participating.
Unfortunately, the quota could not be met based on this criterion. It turned out that 71% of those initially selected had violated the standard. More than half of these had received in excess of $5,000 in compensation from industry sources. Needless to say, the standard had to be altered in order for the study to take place. Based on the evidence, it is clear that pharmaceutical companies, who maintain the highest profit margin of any U.S. industry, are influenced unduly by the parties they represent. We will see how doctors are influenced by pharmaceutical companies to the extent that their decisions on prescriptions for patients are influenced as well as their decisions on what drugs to promote and utilize. For any physician who receives perks, samples and other forms of compensation from these companies is in direct violation with any position of authority in a governing body of the same persuasion.
Indeed, one of the unique aspects of advertising prescription pharmaceuticals is the caveat “Ask your doctor”. The consumer cannot go out and directly...
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