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Developing a Jaundiced Eye All advertising is
potentially deceptive even if strictly true as evidenced by these brief extracts from an item in the Dec 14 2002 issue of the UK medical journal The Lancet (free registration required)
http://www.thelancet.com/journal/vol360/iss9349/full/llan.360.9349.news.23648.3 US government report released on deceptive drug advertisements A US government report released on Dec 4 found that drug companies promote misleading advertisements for their products, even after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has tried to halt them. Further, the report notes that drug companies have continued to make misleading claims even after being cited, in some cases repeatedly, for violations. <snip>. The result is that enforcement is being delayed by 2 to 11 weeks. With the life of many advertisement campaigns less than 2 months, the misleading information may have been completely disseminated before the manufacturer receives the FDA letter..... |
This page draws its examples
form drugs and/or supplements which "target" (now there's a concept...)
menopausal women
|
Here are two examples
from 1997:
While the first is not about advertisements as such, it exposes how apparently independent informational content is manipulated by advertisers: From the March/April 1997 issue of FAIR's magazine, Extra!-- The Media and the Menopause
Industry:
You don't get product ads unless you praise the product.More at http://www.fair.org/extra/9703/hormone.html Then a post to alt.support.menopause by a poster who took the time to deconstruct an ad for Premarin in detail. She points out multiple instances of ambiguous statements and much mismatch and it serves as a good example of how you too can develop a jaundiced eye: Subject: W/A Premarin Ad Critique From: joan Date: 1997/09/07
Wyeth-Ayerst, the makers of Premarin and Prempro took out a full page ad touting their products. Except oddity number one is that the required FDA product warning text was found on the preceding 1/4 page and the glossy image ad with narrative text was found on the following 3/4 page. Now why didn't they spread the whole thing out on a single full page? They paid for a full page ad. Why didn't they use it? Was this an inadvertent or an intentionally deceptive choice? The W/A ad placement required breaking up the text in an awkward manner of another article so this could not have been an editorial choice. Could it be that W/A did not want the reader to make the connection between the ad text and the FDA warning? Usually, (and equally deceptively) the required FDA product warnings follow the drug ads, but this time the FDA warning preceded the ad making it unread and unrelated without even a title heading, taking advantage of the typical reader response which is to read forward and not backwards to avoid making an obvious connection to the accompanying glossy photo ad. Being careful to read all such drug ads word for word, it was not until the very bottom of the two pages of laudatory text for Premarin that this line was found: "Please be sure to read the important information preceding this ad". I had to scratch my head a bit to figure out what they were saying and what they meant by "preceding information." When I turned the page backwards, there was the UNTITLED small print warning undoing pretty much of what the glossy ad tried to accomplish with appealing photos and soothing ad copy. Caveat Emptor. Joan L. More at Premarin
Ad Critique (Detailed critique of the ad's
visuals, major level text, 2nd level text , osteoporosis info,
body text and synopsis)
After complaints and protests about the sort of happenings above, things have improved somewhat - but only somewhat. The jaundiced eye will still find similar if somewhat less blatant examples. By 1999, Medscape had developed an Advertising Policy which can be read at http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/408003_2 (registration is required but this is free) It begins: Editorial - The Ethics
of the Medical Internet
Medscape Advertising Policy
Most medical and health information/education sites on the World WideWeb,
like their counterparts in print publishing, rely on advertising,
then lists 12 principles
it will follow which overall should eliminate the problems outlined in
the first URL above. I do not know if Medscape actually follows these principles
as I haven't specifically looked, but at least it has them and I recommend
reading them. They form a good check list to have in mind while reading
sleazier sites or print materials.
Evista TV ad With the allowing of DCTA (Direct To Consumer Advertising), USA women are also deluged with TV ads, which carefully avoid making specific claims but so arrange the wording and/or visuals that the "logical" inference would by the unmade claim - as in the Premarin ad deconstructed above.. In 2000, the FDA issued a warning letter to Eli Lilly which started out: DDMAC has reviewed this disseminated advertisement and has determined that it is in violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and its implementing regulations. Specifically, we object for the following reasons:more at http://www.oxford.net/~tishy/adosteofda.html and even more through http://www.fda.gov/cder/warn/warn2000.htm The document is a .pdf file |