Non-profit organisation Commercial Alert, which campaigns for tighter regulation of commerce, has launched a new website promoting the banning of direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising in the US.
The group says the purpose of the website is to educate the American public “about the dangers of prescription drug advertising, and to mobilize thousands of Americans to voice their opposition to the ads”.
The website www.stopdrugads.org encourages visitors to send comments to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in opposition to DTC drug advertising. The FDA held two days of hearings on DTC prescription drug advertising in November 2005 and is accepting public comment on the issue until February 28.
“In effect, drug companies are practising medicine without a licence, and that should be illegal,” said Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert. “We've got to halt prescription drug advertising before the next Vioxx tragedy happens.”
On October 27, Commercial Alert released a statement from 211 professors from US medical schools that “direct-to-consumer marketing of prescription drugs should be prohibited.” The statement's endorsers include medical school professors from Harvard, Johns Hopkins, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, Stanford, Yale, Duke, University of California, San Francisco and other medical schools, along with two former editors-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine.
According to a Harris Poll in November 2005, less than one in ten of adult respondents believed that Big Pharma is “generally honest and trustworthy.”
It's sure going to be hard to find juries for the 9,000+ Merck Vioxx trials !
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