Pharma Marketing Faces a Character-Count Conundrum 176
this_boat_is_real writes "There's growing concern over how pharmaceutical companies use social media and the Internet to market their products. Last November, the US Food and Drug Administration held a hearing on the topic, and many were worried over how marketing mediums such as Twitter — which has a 140-character limit on text — can sufficiently disclose drug risks." Here's the FDA's announcement about last year's hearings, which includes links to an archive of presentations as well as a video record of the meeting.
A simple solution (Score:3, Insightful)
What the drug companies should do is to add a disclaimer such as: -
"Though these drugs may work as advertised, their use is not intended for use by residents of the USA. Such residents who wish to employ these drugs should ensure that their employment does not go against laws in their jurisdictions."
Re:A simple solution (Score:5, Insightful)
A simpler solution- don't use twitter. Why the fuck are you looking for medical advise on twitter?
Isn't the solution obvious? (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyway, the fine nation of Uganda has the
Re:A simple solution (Score:5, Insightful)
An even easier solution - don't advertise prescription drugs to patients.
(The over-the-counter drugs are generally low-risk, and in any case the warnings are right on the packaging when you buy them.)
How to meet the character limit :) (Score:5, Insightful)
"Buy __MIRACLEDRUG__ to cure __DREADDISEASE___. See your doctor before using. May be fatal."
There, as long as __MIRACLEDRUG__ and __DREADDISEASE__ aren't too long I think we've met the 140-character limit and mentioned the worst possible side-effect. Can we archive this discussion now?
Re:Why a 140-char limit, and why not by words? (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps because it was designed with SMS limitations in mind?
Re:Neither can anything else (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing is, in a 30 second commercial, you can use a sped-up announcer or 2 point fonts that are completely unreadable, but TECHNICALLY meet the requirements.
In a 140 character twitter message, you can do a bit of unintelligible abbreviation, but even then, 140 characters isn't enough to include the disclaimer ITSELF.
Sure, let's solve those disclosure requirements. (Score:5, Insightful)
Quit allowing the advertisement of prescription drugs. The reason that prescription drugs are, well, by prescription, is that they may carry significant risks, and careful evaluation by a professional is required as to whether a patient should take them.
If a patient needs a prescription, let their doctor be the one who gives them their options, based on a full discussion of the risks and benefits of each possible one, and let the patient be the one to decide based on this information. And while we're at it, let's disallow the pharma companies from ever knowing how often a given doctor prescribes their stuff, so that they can't give any type of reward or kickback (they would still, of course, know how often they're prescribed in aggregate).
Medical decisions should be made based upon a detailed discussion with a professional, not a glossy brochure.
Re:A simple solution (Score:1, Insightful)
Why the fuck are you looking for medical advise on twitter?
Marketing/adverts != medical advice.
Generally one doesn't look for advertisements.
- RG>
Re:A simple solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Hah! I love the closing line in the image you linked: "Treatment patients can live with!"
Setting the bar kinda low now, aren't we?
Re:Sure, let's solve those disclosure requirements (Score:3, Insightful)
If you ban all drug ads, then how do you educate the public that a particular syndrome is treatable?
Re:Sure, let's solve those disclosure requirements (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A simple solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Even better would be to go back to the good ol' days and prohibit marketing prescription drugs to anyone without a license to prescribe drugs. Crazy, I know.
not a problem (Score:4, Insightful)
wanna bet the law gets changed ?
Re:Sure, let's solve those disclosure requirements (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A simple solution (Score:4, Insightful)
I tend to agree. We should not allow advertisements for prescription drugs in ANY venue intended for the general public. The pharmaceutical industry has done irreparable harm to the health care industry through advertising. It's one thing to have people going out on their own and doing independent research to find out alternative treatments that might help them. It's quite another when sizable percentages of the population whose sole source of information about a product is what they learned in a 30 second TV ad decide to follow the ad's advice to "ask your doctor if [insert drug here] is right for you". If everyone did that, doctors would never get anything done....
More often than not, it's a waste of doctors' time having to explain to patients why a particular highly advertised medicine is not the best choice. Half the time, the reason is that the medicine the person is on is working, so changing medications would just be adding risk with little benefit. As such, this sort of direct-to-patient advertising is harmful to both the quality of patient care and the proper functioning of our health insurance system.
Don't just ban it on Twitter. Ban it on TV, on the radio, in newspapers, magazines, and related Google search result sidebars, too. While you're at it, please crack down on the "herbal viagra" spam. :-)
Re:A simple solution (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can't SELL directly to the consumer then you should not be allowed to market to the consumer. These are substances that are considered so bad that untrustworthy civilians can't be trusted to buy them without a doctors referral. That line of reasoning should apply to the ads. People that can't be trusted to buy their own drugs should not be conned into demanding them from their doctor.
Why must they advertise on Twitter? (Score:5, Insightful)
The disclosure laws are there for a reason. If you can't satisfy their requirements in a tweet then you can't advertise pharmaceuticals on Twitter. If you can't satisfy them in a Google ad then you can't advertise pharmaceuticals in a Google ad.
This isn't affecting any one company over another or anything like that. It's just following the laws to their conclusion -- and, really, going right along with their intention. Putting a drug in your body is of much greater consequence than what company you buy your mass-produced junk from, and these laws make sure drug companies can't just do snappy, feel-good 10-second spots with no substance whatsoever like beer companies and cola companies.
A big part of advertising is repeating a brand name over and over. There's an impression made by hearing a brand name in association with positive images or text, even if you aren't very involved with the ad. The disclosure laws try to prevent companies from just spamming you with impressions and making sure there is substantial information right up front. If it's behind a link, as many of these companies propose, that's all lost. The casual eye skips over, gets the positive impression and none of the disclosure.
So... within our current framework if there's no room to disclose right up front there should be no ad at all. Maybe the disclosure laws suck, maybe the fact that drugs are advertised at all sucks... those are separate points. As the law stands now, no Twitter ads for Viagra. Yay!
Re:Sure, let's solve those disclosure requirements (Score:3, Insightful)
Already happens, see alcohol and tobacco advertising restrictions. Previous SCOTUS rulings oked them. The current SCOTUS may not, but we may get lucky and have Scalia or Thomas die.
Re:Sure, let's solve those disclosure requirements (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A simple solution (Score:2, Insightful)
More patient throughput and the patients' problems disappear because they're left with nothing but hindbrains, drooling stupors, and tardive dyskenesia.
As a vistor to the US... (Score:4, Insightful)
... I am regularly amazed by the sheer number of pharma ads on television. Depending on the time of day I can see anywhere between 50 to 100% of the ads on TV being about pharma products.
I'd worry about getting those ones down before I worried about the Internet ones.
Re:A simple solution (Score:3, Insightful)
I totally agree. Pharmaceutical companies should not be allowed to advertise prescription drugs and OTC medications should be limited to after family hours. My thoughts on why there's so much prescription drug abuse by the young is that they are bombarded by advertisements on TV.
Have a pain, take this drug.. Life got you down? Here try this one. No wonder kids think drugs are the answer to everything. That's what they've been told by Pharma... Take a drug (prescription, of course, illegal drugs are bad m-kay) to make your life "normal".
Lawyers shouldn't advertise either, but that's getting into another topic.
Re:A simple solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, as an Australian, I find this pharma marketing so bizarre. Except for over-the-counter stuff like pain killers, there is no advertising of medical products in Australia (same for NZ, UK, probably most of the rest of the western world in fact).
How can a non-expert have any idea what the best treatment is for a disease like schizophrenia? Indeed, for anything more serious than a head cold? I can imagine someone doing some serious research and making a suggestion to their doctor (who will hopefully either say 'good idea', or 'not a good idea, because....'), but basing a complex drug treatment choice on a magazine or TV ad? WTF?
Besides, big pharma spends more money on marketing than they do on research. Since probably 99% of that marketing budget is spent in the USA alone, it is incredibly wasteful.
Re:Sure, let's solve those disclosure requirements (Score:5, Insightful)
Free speech is never absolute, and certainly never in a commercial setting. For example, your doctor cannot go post your medical records on a public website. That's free speech, but HIPAA bans it, and I think you'd find arguing that a doctor should be exempt from HIPAA on free speech grounds not to meet the reception you'd expect in court.
In advertising specifically, tobacco and alcohol ads are already restricted. Indeed, a mandate of disclosures (and a requirement that advertising be true) are all allowable restrictions.
And I say this as someone who will ardently defend the freedom of speech, even down to things one finds disgusting or shocking or distasteful. But speech when you're trying to sell something is different altogether. Speech when you're selling something that could have significant risks, ten times so. No constitutional amendment is required here.
It's not the count of the characters (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not the count of the characters, but the content of their character that is the problem with big pharma.
Re:A simple solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, that is true, and such advertising can be quite insidious. But it is at least targetted at the right audience, ie people best equipped to make a well-informed decision. The insidious part comes when the marketing becomes more than just a sales pitch, and turns into free gifts (bribes) or worse.
I disagree with your claim that doctors don't have time, knowledge or inclination to investigate the claims directly, and are more likely to be swayed by the fancy literature and free lunch accompanying the salesperson. All doctors at least know how to read a technical report, and know where to go to get further information (eg, journal literature). Maybe some doctors don't have time to do this, or take the easy option and rely on the sales pitch, but at least they do have the necessary technical background.
Re:A simple solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Nonsense. A doctor given 15 minutes to gather a new patient's history and a recent 8 hour forced presentation on lowering drug costs is often squeezed for time to review the dozen potential treatments and review them for factors that conflict with its use for a specific patient. I've reminded of the colleague with a bad shoulder: while he and I were discussing his keyboard layout to ease his discomfort, we discussed his new pain medication (Naproxen). I looked it up, because of some recent shoulder issues I'd had (lifting a server off of someone's foot). I noticed its kidney risks and pointed them out to this diabetic colleague, who takes blood pressure medication. While his shoulder doctor had known its usefulness, he'd missed out on the issues for diabetics and their kidneys, because he was apparently rushed by HMO policies and the short times actually allocated to talk to patients. My colleague's kidney specialist flipped out when he was asked about the drug.
The shoulder doctor was highly recommended, a skilled sports medicine specialist. But he was hurried by his HMO, whose policies really reduce the amount of time doctors can spend with patients and foist the medical history gathering and basic physical testing off onto nurses and physician's assistants, so all the doctor sees is a sheet or two filled with diagnosis. It's gotten very hard for a doctor to do any research for their patients.
Re:A simple solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Thats interesting, do companies try to get around that, legitimately or not? And, what kind of doctor are you? I was kind of thinking about GPs when I wrote the comment you replied to..
Hm, but if two drugs from different are available for the same complaint, could the fact that the rep from A was here last week (wether he bought you sandwiches or not) influence your prescribing practice? Thats the way that advertising normally works. The company spends masses of money to get the brand name into your head, so that when you see it you recognise it.. and when you recognise it, you are more likely to buy it than not. This works well on <made up number> percentage of the population which I can only surmise includes doctors who are human in other respects.