70% of drugs advertised on TV are less effective than others on the market

[thewayne]

They are described as being of "low therapeutic value", i.e., less effective. So basically the drug companies are trying to sucker you into brow-beating your doctor into prescribing stuff that you saw on TV - which is going to be non-generic and much more expensive - and it is likely to be less effective than other drugs on the market.

Yeah.

So what we've got here is the pharma industry KNOWING that the drug isn't very effective, but they figure that if they put a lot of money into advertising on TV and in magazines that they can shift enough units to work towards recovering costs before the doctors find out it's less effective and start saying "No, I will not prescribe that. Here are more effective alternatives for that condition."

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/01/most-prescription-drugs-advertised-on-tv-are-of-low-benefit-study-finds/

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/01/18/2122237/70-of-drugs-advertised-on-tv-are-of-low-therapeutic-value-study-finds

EDIT: I forgot to mention that there are only two countries IN THE WORLD that allow such advertising of drugs: the USA and New Zealand! How the Kiwis were suckered into doing this, I do not know. But as chained to corporate profits as we are, I don't think this will ever change. For me, this is one of the reasons why the mute button on the remote was invented: if I can't skip the commercial, at least I can silence it.

Comments

[dewline]

And we have spillover effect into Canada - and elsewhere, I expect - because of cable and satellite TV.

[thewayne]

Now that's interesting! I did not know that, I thought that normally advertising wasn't allowed across national borders unless it was bought in the additional markets.

Obviously you can't do anything about terrestrial broadcast TV and radio near a border.