I’ve seen a few documentaries recently and I found the topics they cover to be very interesting and thought-provoking. One of the fascinating topics was the controversies over steroid use. Something that came up in that documentary was general drug use.
One of the biggest things that got my attention in the documentary was the mention that pharmaceutical companies can advertise on the television in the United States but not in Europe. This got me thinking: what do other countries do? More specifically, what do other developed countries do. So, I did some of my own “Googling” to find out. It appears that only the United States and New Zealand permit Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) advertising of pharmaceuticals.[1] Based on a report published by the U.S. Government Accountability Office in 2006, $4.2 billion was spent in 2005 by drug companies on DTC advertising.[2] As you can see in this table from the report, the ratio of spending on research when compared the total amount of money spent (or possibility of earning in the case of samples since amount for samples are retail costs and not actual cost to the companies) has been steadily decreasing over the years, spending more on promotion and less on research. This ratio comes out to almost 50% of their money. This doesn’t seem right. I understand, on a positive note, that advertising can generate visibility of a medical solution but how much of this is necessary? Will buying a potentially multi-million dollar television advertising block during the Super Bowl create that much revenue for a drug company? If this advertising is necessary, does this help explain why we are going through a health care crisis right now? I must say, it cannot help the situation.
[1] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Direct-to-consumer_advertising
[2] U.S. Government Accountability Office, Prescription Drugs: Improvements Needed in FDA's Oversight of Direct-to-Consumer Advertising', GAO report Number GAO-07-54, December 14, 2006
