The Truth Behind Drug Ads

May 8, 2008— -- The advertisement showed a plate of pasta and a grandfather in a bow tie. Its message was that regardless of whether you suffer from high cholesterol due to your eating habits or due to your genes, Vytorin could help.

Merck/Schering-Plough's Vyotrin ad was heavily marketed even as the company delayed releasing a study that called into question the drug's effectiveness. Now it's among several ads pulled from the airwaves amid concerns that prescription drug advertisements can sometimes mislead and are not completely truthful.

"I think the main problem with directed consumer ads is they don't give consumers the information they need to make an informed decision about the drug," said Steven Woloshin, associate professor of medicine and of community and family medicine at Dartmouth Medical School. "They don't give the most fundamental information, which is how well does the drug work?"

Today, lawmakers took aim at drug ads during a Capitol Hill hearing, questioning whether ads for pharmaceutical drugs are marketing or educational tools, or downright deceptions.

"American consumers should not have to rely on the oversight function of Congress to make sure drug companies tell the truth in their advertisements," said Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce panel's Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee.

In 2006, drug companies spent nearly $5 billion on direct ads to consumers, an 80 percent increase over what they were spending in 2002, according to IMS Health. Those efforts pay off: Every dollar spent on direct-to-consumer advertising results in $6 in increased sales, according to the House committee's staff. The increase in money spent on ad campaigns surpasses the increase in money spent on research and development for new drugs in the past decade.

But ads tend to play up the benefits of a drug and play down its risks, according to Ruth S. Day, director of Duke University's Medical Cognition Laboratory.

Day found that 80 percent of people who saw drug ads remembered a drug's benefits, while only 20 percent could recall its side effects. She said ads often provide information about a drug's risks by using a faster speech rate or during visual and auditory distractions.