Keeping Patients in the Dark

It is illegal for manufacturers to advertise prescription drugs directly to their consumers - the patients. The information which can be made available on over-the-counter drugs is also controlled. Even advertising to medical practitioners is strictly limited. This is an obvious anomaly in an information age, when informed consumers, aware of their rights, can access information from an ever-increasing number of sources, including the internet. The traditional justification for restrictions has been that patients lack the knowledge to make decisions about their own treatments, and that doctors can always be trusted to act solely in the best interests of their patients. The emergence of well-informed support groups for sufferers from particular conditions has challenged the first assumption. The increasingly obvious rationing of resources, including pharmaceuticals, in a cash-strapped NHS has undermined the latter. "Last month a report...said that patients increasingly want access to information on which they can make their own decisions.
The real reason for the ban, it claimed, is to curb drug spending and to 'restrict access to information in hope that badly informed patients would more willingly to accept their lot.'" The Express on Sunday. "Laws and regulations stopping drug companies from advertising directly to patients are 'absurd and unhelpful' in an age when 'the rights of the consumer are supposed to be paramount', according to a booklet..." Health Service Journal. "One of the report's authors, Professor Brian Edwards (professor of health care development, Sheffield university) says that 'today's patients are increasingly frustrated by rules that, while designed to protect them, also limit their personal choice.'" The Pharmaceutical Journal. "It points out the anomaly created by the internet where European consumers can access US web sites that advertise drugs direct to the public. It also highlights the increasing financial and political pressures on doctors' prescribing. Advertising restrictions are a method of controlling governments' drugs' budgets, claims the book." Chemist & Druggist.
"David Green, the director of the institute, says the real reason for the advertising ban is to curb drug spending and 'restrict access to information in the hope that badly informed patients would more willingly accept their lot.'" The Independent. "Another contributor of the report, Harry Cayton (executive director of the Alzheimer's Disease Society and vice-chair of the Standing Advisory Committee on Consumer Involvement in NHS R&D), challenges the current 'absurd' level of secrecy and says that increased advertising would force the health service to be more open and accountable for prescribing policy." Scrip.