Drug Marketing Unchained

Today's New England Journal of Medicine has an important article on trends in the drug industry's marketing spending. Most critics have always been hampered by the opacity of the industry's corporate reports, which subsume total marketing costs within the larger "administrative" line item. But drawing on publicly available data at the Food and Drug Administration and purchasing data from private consulting firms that serve the industry, lead author Julie Donohue of the University of Pittsburgh has been able to give us the first detailed portrait of the industry's marketing machine.

Guess what? The news ain't good.

Despite the massive hue and cry by consumer groups, critics and the more progressive corners of the medical profession, total marketing spending increased substantially in the past decade, rising to 18.2 percent of drug industry sales in 2005 from 14.2 percent in 1996, the year before direct-to-consumer advertising took off.

DTC in the most recent year cost consumers $4.2 billion or 2.6 percent of total drug sales, up from under $1 billion or 1.2 percent of sales in 1996.

But the biggest jump came from free samples, which many doctors excuse because they are sometimes handed out to poorer patients. In reality, they are a major inducement to start their patients on one particular drug. The value of those freebies rose to $18.4 billion in 2005 or 11.2 percent of total industry sales compared to just $6.1 billion or 7.6 percent of sales in 1996.

The FDA has failed miserably in monitoring the explosion of advertising. According to the survey, only one in three ads were reviewed by the agency prior to public release in 2005, down from two in three ads in 1996.

Nothing in the data suggests that the drumbeat of criticism in recent years has led the drug companies to back away from their promotional strategies. "Our data show that a mandatory waiting period on advertising for new drugs would represent a dramatic departure from current industry practices," Donohue and colleagues wrote.

Pressured by an unholy alliance between big broadcasters, publishers and the drug industry, the Democratic-controlled House and Senate eliminated restrictions on DTC from the FDA reform bills that recent passed both chambers.

Posted by gooznews at August 16, 2007 12:19 PM