Capitol Hill Blue Forums Science and Technology Health, Medicine & the healing Sciences Pharmaceutical Advertising

I'm on the fence about Dr. Weil; sometimes he makes sense to me, sometimes he doesn't. He's sold me a book or two, though.

As for pharmaceutical advertising - I really don't like it. I think it should be limited even more strictly than tobacco and alcohol.

It's disturbing in a couple of different ways.

- It's suggesting that "civilians" have access to more recent pharmaceutical information than their physicians do (it may or may not be true; it's disturbing.)
- It's a weird parallel to advertising to small children: "Mommy, buy me this!" "Doc, prescribe me this!"

On the other hand, if your physician is a little too wedded to one particular pharm company (or sales rep), it does make some sense for the patient to know about alternatives. Still, I would prefer that knowledge of alternatives to come from something other than advertising, that bastion of truth and accuracy.

I'd also like to see as much of that 24% of sales revenue moved from promotion to R&D.