Pharmaceuticals give me a headache, guess I need a pill
We all know the high price of drugs charged by the pharmaceutical companies is due to the high cost of research and development, right?
You might want a second opinion on that.
Science Daily reported that in 2004 the pharmaceutical industry spent 24.4% on promotion versus only 13.4% for research and development. Perhaps without advertising the price of drugs could be reduced?
But wait. We don’t want to hurt the profitability of the pharmaceutical industry, do we? No need to worry. According to The Everyday Economist blog, the pharmaceutical industry is the most profitable one, beating out banks, high tech, telecomm, food and beverage and even oil. The graph shows that profit for pharmaceuticals is almost 20% in terms of profit per dollar of sales.
It pays to advertise, right? Did you know that pharmaceutical advertising is banned in over 30 industrialized nations? Only the United States and New Zealand currently allow it and New Zealand is currently considering a ban.
On May 8, 2008, from a story in Reuters:
Rep. Bart Stupak, at a hearing to discuss specific ads by Pfizer Inc, Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co Inc and Schering-Plough Corp, said television commercials in particular use deceptive techniques to push products to potential patients and increase sales.
“It appears that we need to enforce significant restrictions on DTC (direct-to-consumer) ads to protect American consumers from manipulative commercials designed to mislead and deceive for the profit of pharmaceutical companies,” said Stupak, head of the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce investigative panel.
What’s wrong with advertising helping to get the word out to people about the medications they need? Well, do we really need them? According to CBS News, in the last five years Americans have had more prescriptions written for anti-depressants than any other class of drugs. We are we so depressed?
Is all of this medication treating something that was always there that was lurking beneath the surface? Or has pharmaceutical advertising created a treatment in search of an illness?
Tags: advertising, drugs, medication, pharmaceuticals, prescriptions
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