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According to a supplement put out by Advertising Age in March entitled Fact Pack 2004 Edition, with additional information taken from Ad Age’s web site, the pharmaceutical industry continues to be quite adept at maintaining its place among the leading advertisers. Four of the top 25 U.S. advertisers, in terms of spending in this country during 2002, were drug companies:
• The fourth biggest spender was Pfizer, with $2.57 billion in ads in 2002. Pfizer makes atorvastatin (LIPITOR), the...
According to a supplement put out by Advertising Age in March entitled Fact Pack 2004 Edition, with additional information taken from Ad Age’s web site, the pharmaceutical industry continues to be quite adept at maintaining its place among the leading advertisers. Four of the top 25 U.S. advertisers, in terms of spending in this country during 2002, were drug companies:
• The fourth biggest spender was Pfizer, with $2.57 billion in ads in 2002. Pfizer makes atorvastatin (LIPITOR), the highest selling drug in the world.
• Not far behind, at number eight, was Johnson and Johnson with $1.8 billion. One of Johnson and Johnson’s top sellers is risperidone (RISPERDAL), a drug that increases the risk of stroke when it is prescribed “off-label” for dementia. See Worst Pills Best Bills News, June 2003.
• GlaxoSmithKline, at number12, spent $1.55 billion. This company makes the top-selling diabetes drug rosiglitazone (AVANDIA) that was listed as a Do Not Use drug in our book.
• Merck, which came in nineteenth, spent $1.16 billion. Merck produces the overpriced arthritis and painkiller drug rofecoxib (VIOXX). See Worst Pills Best Pills News, April 2001.
Not in the top 25 but still spending a great deal of (patients’) money were Wyeth, Novartis, Bristol Myers Squibb, Schering-Plough, Aventis, and Bayer, all in the top 200 advertising spenders in 2002. The total spent by these 10 companies (including the four highlighted above), was $9.58 billion dollars in that year.
Most of the most heavily advertised drugs are, in fact, no more effective or safe than other drugs but billions of dollars “must” be spent to try to convince doctors and patients otherwise. These recent expensive campaigns have probably been much more successful than in years past because the FDA has all but stopped enforcing the laws concerning false and misleading prescription drug advertising, with an 85% decrease in enforcement actions between 1998 and the end of 2003.
This total does not include various forms of bribing doctors with free gifts, free trips, phony consulting jobs and free samples of drugs, almost always much more expensive than but not necessarily safer or more effective than older drugs. Not infrequently, as we have warned Worst Pills, Best Pills subscribers, these heavily sampled new drugs turn out to be more dangerous than older drugs.
What You Can Do
Do not waste your time looking at or listening to prescription (or over-the-counter) drug ads. The all-too-often false or misleading information may do more harm than good, physically and to the pocketbook.
