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Medicine Advertising Television

70% of Drugs Advertised On TV Are of 'Low Therapeutic Value,' Study Finds (arstechnica.com) 107

Posted by BeauHD from the surprise-surprise dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: According to a new study, a little over 70 percent of prescription drugs advertised on television were rated as having "low therapeutic value," meaning they offer little benefit compared with drugs already on the market. The study, appearing in JAMA Open Network, aligns with longstanding skepticism that heavily promoted drugs have high therapeutic value. "One explanation might be that drugs with substantial therapeutic value are likely to be recognized and prescribed without advertising, so manufacturers have greater incentive to promote drugs of lesser value," said the authors, which include researchers at Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth.

For the new study, researchers led by Aaron Kesselheim, who leads Harvard's Program On Regulation, Therapeutics, And Law (PORTAL), looked at monthly lists of the top-advertised drugs on TV in the US between 2015 and 2021. They also looked up therapeutic value ratings for those drugs from independent health assessment agencies in Canada, France, and Germany. The value ratings were based on drugs' therapeutic benefit, safety profile, and strength of evidence, as compared with existing drugs. Any drug rated "moderate" or above was classified as a "high value" drug for the study. For drugs with multiple ratings, the study authors used the most favorable rating, which they note could overestimate the proportion of higher-benefit drugs.

Of the top advertised drugs, 73 had at least one value rating. Collectively, pharmaceutical companies spent $22.3 billion on advertising for those 73 drugs between 2015 and 2021. Even with the generous ratings, 53 of the 73 drugs (roughly 73 percent) were categorized as low-benefit. Collectively, these low-benefit drugs accounted for $15.9 billion of the ad spending. The top three low-benefit drugs by dollar amount were Dulaglutide (type 2 diabetes), Varenicline (smoking cessation), and Tofacitinib (rheumatoid arthritis). The outlook for change is bleak, the authors note. "Policy makers and regulators could consider limiting direct-to-consumer advertising to drugs with high therapeutic or public health value or requiring standardized disclosure of comparative effectiveness and safety data," Kesselheim and his colleagues concluded, "but policy changes would likely require industry cooperation or face constitutional challenge." The report notes that the U.S. is "one of only two countries that allows direct-to-consumer (DTC) drug advertisements, such as TV commercials." The other is New Zealand.
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70% of Drugs Advertised On TV Are of 'Low Therapeutic Value,' Study Finds More

70% of Drugs Advertised On TV Are of 'Low Therapeutic Value,' Study Finds

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  • need to ban the ad's like in most palces (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @05:44PM (#63220934)

    need to ban the ad's like in most places (that also seem to have much lower drug costs as well)

    • Re:need to ban the ad's like in most palces (Score:4, Informative)

      by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @06:23PM (#63221074)

      Most civilized places already have.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      The US is one of two countries where the drug dealers have direct access to consumers through the media. They no longer have to stand on corners. They can advertise their drug mills. And now there is app for that. Feeling sad going to work on Monday, or a stubbed toe, get all the drugs you want.

      One thing that has been kept out of the discussion and lawsuits of the opioid crisis is that it exactly coincides with the change in laws that allowed direct to consumer advertising in the us.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tsqr ( 808554 )

        Have you ever seen a TV commercial for oxycodone or any other opoid? Neither have I. As a matter of fact, I've never seen an ad for any of the drugs mentioned in TFS. It's wall-to-wall psoriasis and Crohn's/IBD.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tsqr ( 808554 )

            I believe that's a short excerpt from a video used by Purdue salesmen to promote Oxycontin to physicians, not a TV commercial. This article [nih.gov] is a detailed description of Perdue's marketing methods, and there's no mention of television commercials. But I suppose I could be wrong. I'd really like to hear from someone who actually saw such a commercial on TV.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by fermion ( 181285 )
              I was not aware the drug dealers had paid trolls on websites. Learn something new every day.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by tsqr ( 808554 )

                I was not aware the drug dealers had paid trolls on websites. Learn something new every day.

                Is that your standard response to anyone that tries to engage you in discussion and cites a credible source to back up a point of view that is different from your own? "Learn something new every day"? Not so much, it would seem.

    • Apostrophes. They aren't difficult.

      Clue: They don't mean "watch out here comes a letter 's'..."

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by labnet ( 457441 )

      Exactly. Drug advertising is banned in most western countries, but USA, USA!
      Money No.1, Peoples well being .. down the list somewhere.

  • For a good time... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @05:47PM (#63220944)
    Go look up any video with Katie Porter talking about the Pharma industry. My favorite is one where she broke down how much they spent on marketing and stock buybacks vs research & development.

    Marketing alone was several times R&D.
    • Yup. And the story, while it's good to have rigorous analysis for it, is pretty much a tautology: If it's a breakthrough drug you don't need to push it on late-night TV because its desirability is self-evident. It's only the junk stuff that no-one would otherwise buy that you have to put a lot of effort into peddling.

  • ...an idiot tax.

    • Often a taxpayer-subsidized idiot tax. So while I would be uncomfortable forbidding drug companies from advertising their effective products, I would be fine forbidding federally subsidized insurance plans from paying a lot more for marginally better drugs that are advertised. Maybe even create a discount based on the advertising spend.

      (The devil is in the details which we on /. don't have to worry about. Maybe a new drug is only 5% better for most people, but significantly better for a small subset of the

  • ... people watching tv are racing to extinction anyway ...

    • My grandfather is in his 90s and has watched tv his whole life. But yeah, racing to extinction. Sure.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by HiThere ( 15173 )

        In his 90's? Yeah, he's probably only got a few more years of watching. But I really think that the GP was talking about the market for TV viewers, because that's what's actually "racing to extinction". I suspect that TV viewers will continue to exist, but whether marketing to TV viewers will continue to exist as a separate market is a different question.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jbengt ( 874751 )

        My grandfather is in his 90s and has watched tv his whole life.

        If your grandfather is in his 90s, then he probably wasn't watching TV until he was in his 20s.

  • Are drugs not advertised of more therap. value? (Score:3)

    by ffkom ( 3519199 ) on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @06:06PM (#63221006)
    This one 70% value alone does not really tell us much. What percentage of drugs not advertised on TV are of "low therapeutic value"? What percentage of drugs prescribed to people are of "low therapeutic value"?

    It may very well be that those 70% are not a high number in comparison, and TV ads may not mean much regarding therapeutic value. Maybe even promotions of drugs that are "journalistic information", rather than commercials, have no correlation with "therapeutic value".

    • According to the summary (and the article)

      70 percent of prescription drugs advertised on television were rated as having "low therapeutic value," meaning they offer little benefit compared with drugs already on the market

      This seems quite clear, what the 70% figure means. It's comparing new, heavily advertised drugs, to existing drugs that the new drugs purport to improve upon.

      I know, I know, this is Slashdot!

    • What the study showed is that there are perfectly effective generics or just plain cheaper patent medicine that accomplishes the same thing for less money. It's not the drugs being advertised don't work it's that they're alternatives that are just as good and a lot cheaper.

      The take away from the study is that the money being spent on r&D by big pharma isn't producing new and better drugs it's just producing drugs they can make more money off of.

      When you say it like that without the context of th
  • I haven't had TV or seen a single commercial in almost 25 years now. Ignorance truly is bliss!

  • Yeah, right. You're going to have a hard time convincing my wife the blue pill magic of a good regular d*cking isn't therapeutic.

  • Trulicity, Chantix, and Xeljanz (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Trulicity, Chantix, and Xeljanz are the brand names of the low-performing drugs mentioned in TFS.

    • Chantix always seemed like a raw deal to me. Instead of switching over to nicotine gum/patch and drawing down off that, you're switching over to some weirder chemical with more side-effects, and trying to draw down off that.

      Within 6 months, 90% of Chantix users are back to smoking again. So it doesn't seem more effective than the gum, but it's definitely more expensive, and requires a doctor visit.

      I quit smoking with the gum. It took a few tries, but once I was really ready to do it, it didn't take long. I

  • I wonder how that compares to drugs that are prescribed?

  • and US is a mess...

    • Yeah Brazil is doing great, isn't it!

      • yeap: more than 1400 people jailed here, and investigations to come and jail much more (while US don't even had Trump behind bars, which explicitly supported the Capitol invasion during it...)

  • self-fulfilling (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Xylantiel ( 177496 ) on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @06:17PM (#63221052)
    Isn't that why they are advertised on TV? If they were of high therapeutic value they wouldn't need to be advertised. My bet is that even TV drugs that aren't of "low" therapeutic value only get up to "moderate" value. Doctors are not as asleep as the pharma industry likes to pretend. (Ads like this are illegal in many countries for good reasons.)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rgmoore ( 133276 )

      There are possible justifications for advertising, especially to let patients know about genuinely new treatments. Viagra is a good example. When it came out, it treated a condition for which there was no good existing drug and which a lot of patients weren't talking to their doctors about through a combination of embarrassment and belief there wasn't an effective treatment. There was a legitimate benefit to letting Pfizer advertise it, but it is the exception, not the rule.

      That said, having pharma tal

      • And, of course, none of those limitations apply to the medical device industry, because they're all part of a voluntary code of conduct by PhRMA (trade association) that the drug companies put in to prevent legal limitation. The device industry is waaaay less picky. Go to a drug dinner? Yeah, free food, but no non-medical personnel permitted (so you can't take your spouse unless doctor or nurse themselves). No Post-Its, no pens, no vacations.

        Go to a device party? Yeah, invite pretty much whomever, only one
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  • Well ... (Score:3)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @06:26PM (#63221084)

    "One explanation might be that drugs with substantial therapeutic value are likely to be recognized and prescribed without advertising, so manufacturers have greater incentive to promote drugs of lesser value," ...

    Ya but I imagine heavily advertised drugs are more likely to still be on-patent and/or have higher price markups / profit margins and be of higher value to the pharmaceutical companies.

    For example, Nexium was heavily advertised when it came out, but it was purportedly not much more effective than its predecessor Prilosec, which was then much less expensive as it was off-patent and available as a generic -- if I remember things correctly.

    • Re:Well ... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by demonlapin ( 527802 ) on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @08:07PM (#63221312) Homepage Journal
      You do. They went from providing a racemic mixture of compounds to a chirally-pure compound at half the dose (so, the same amount of active ingredient).

      Plenty of those; there's Celexa (citalopram) and Lexapro (escitalopram, literally S-citalopram), zopiclone vs eszopliclone (S-zoplicone), Prilosec (omeprazole) vs esomprezole (S-omeprazole), etc. All to give them a patented drug.

      Meanwhile, the companies take literally groundbreaking drugs like sugammadex and put them behind paywalls. Nothing else works anything like it at all, and it is an absolute game-changer in anesthesia, so much so that the American Society of Anesthesiologists put out a practice guideline last month insisting that it be used in essentially all cases (it completely reverses the most common paralytic drug, and I've had to reintubate exactly one person after surgery since it became available - for a totally different reason). I'm sure the manufacturer had a hand in that, but if they had priced it at $20 a vial instead of $80, they would have completely eliminated the rest of the market from day one and made an absolute fortune. They deserve to; it's astounding. If you know a recovery room nurse, ask about it.

      Anesthesia mostly relies on older drugs. We practically never have new ones come out. Unsurprisingly, we use a lot of drugs on people in day-to-day practice, and most of them have to be cheap cheap cheap because of volume. 8-10 drugs for a fairly simple anesthetic, multiplied by every surgery performed, adds up fast.

      • Thanks for the interesting take and info ...

        • I was a chemistry nerd before I became a doctor, so it's not surprising that I ended up in a field that relies a lot on pharmacology and physiology. There's a lot going on under the hood when you start suppressing natural responses and have to make them up with administered drugs. One drug to put you out quickly. At least one paralytic if you're having surgery in the chest, abdomen, or pelvis, or certain orthopedic surgeries; sometimes two different ones. At least one pain med, often two or more. One to kee
  • big pharma wants to milk it for all the cash cow they can out of it

  • I had Doug Flutie and Frank Thomas just sell me some pills with a secret patented ingredient guaranteed to make me the most virile old guy on the planet! ARE YOU SAYING THEY LIED?!? Shit! I haven't been this annoyed since that guy "Bob" sold me those special pills that never seemed to work.

    • I liked it better when the only things Doug Flutie sold were boxes of breakfast cereal for charity.

  • Even if they completely "sell" me on the idea I want what they're pedaling? I can't even legally buy it on my own in the USA. My doctor has to write the prescription for it, and he/she would be a terrible doctor (liable for malpractice, even) for willingly writing it based simply on me asking for it.

    Especially since the law seems to require disclosing the potential side effects as part of the ads, it usually negates any enthusiasm they try to drum up about taking one of them, anyway. "It might clear my skin

    • People do ask their doctors about these pills. A lot of doctors will pretty much write you a prescription for anything unless the DEA has put it on the fun stuff list.

  • Where else can we find out about a drug that causes tons of problems but it MIGHT fix your particular problem in the mean time? Some of these drugs literally mention they may cause death but hey, we fixed that other problem, right?

    It's amazing anyone buys anything from these people but then again not really.

  • - misleading headline - (Score:3)

    by swell ( 195815 ) <jabberwock@poetic.com> on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @07:12PM (#63221190)

    better: 70% of products advertised are of low value

    This covers the scope of the problem more effectively. Why are products advertised? Because they won't sell otherwise. Why won't they sell? Because they are commodities, essentially identical to other products. So you hope your brand name; Nike, Coca Cola, Under Armour, etc will sell your generic product to simple minded consumers. Or maybe you can distinguish it by color; Craftsman red, DeWalt yellow, Bosch blue, Ridged orange, etc.

    In the case of drugs, ads are often needed because after a patent expires, the company brings out a new drug nearly identical to the expired one, but with a new patent and a big advert campaign to inflate the price. They are then competing with their own original product and some generic clones.

    Products with a long positive reputation require less adverts. Innovative products naturally catch the eye and need less advertising.

    Solution: Develop a reputation for honesty and quality. Innovate in a way that benefits consumers.

    • Nike, Coca Cola, Under Armour, etc will sell your generic product to simple minded consumers. Or maybe you can distinguish it by color; Craftsman red, DeWalt yellow, Bosch blue, Ridged orange, etc.

      I agree with you in a certain sense of principal but thing is none of those products do i require to extend my life or have become the necessary compoenents for some people to have a decent quality of life. All those products should engage in advertising because they operate in markets that work in the competitive sense of the matter. Pharmaceuticals and healthcare in general have so many market and demand failures built into the nature of it that we cannot apply normal capitalist rules to them.

      When you t

    • Or maybe you can distinguish it by color; Craftsman red, DeWalt yellow, Bosch blue, Ridged orange, etc.

      I thought Milwaukee was red...

  • Well, of COURSE they have little value. Why else would they have to resort to advertising on TV?

  • Nurofen is a widely promoted anti-inflammatory and painkiller on TV. It comes in various guises; gell capsules, tablet etc which are all the same thing - 200mg Ibuprofen

    If you buy generic Ibuprofen at the pharmacy/supermarket it's less than half the price of Nurofen

    Brand marketing works.

  • The heavier the marketing (of ANY product) (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Wednesday January 18, 2023 @09:02PM (#63221396) Homepage

    The worse of a deal the product is likely to be.

    Think about products that are really pushed by salespeople.
    - time shares
    - lottery tickets
    - extended warranties
    - high end smartphones

    You name it. The products that are pushed the hardest, are the ones that make the most money for the seller, not the ones that are best for YOU.

    • Because those products make the most money, the manufacturers can afford to pay the sales people much better and get better salespeople as a result. You can't pay much commission for a product with a 10% gross margin. You can pay quite a bit of commission for a product with 75% gross margin.

      • This is all true. And a product with a high profit margin is, by definition, a bad deal for the buyer and a good deal for the seller.

        • This is all true. And a product with a high profit margin is, by definition, a bad deal for the buyer and a good deal for the seller.

          Not "by definition". A product with a high profit margin may or may not be a good deal for the buyer, it depends on what the buyer gets out of it. If the buyer is not misled or coerced in some way, and they believe the purchase is a good value for them, then -- by definition -- it is, because there is no better arbiter of value than the buyer.

          In the case under discussion it appears that people are being misled to some degree about the drugs in question. Not that what they're told is false, existing laws

          • In economics theory, "efficiency" means that "every economic good is optimally allocated across production and consumption." Optimal distribution means that there is a balance between the need for the producer to make a profit, and for the consumer to reduce their costs. High profit margins are optimal for the producer, but sub-optimal for the consumer. It doesn't matter if the consumer thinks they got a good deal, because that can happen due to the consumer's lack of information. If they knew the profit ma

            • Drugs can't be efficiently allocated because of the patent system. They become efficiently allocated once the patents expire. The supposed deal is that the patents allow the drug companies to make back money over a period of time and, in exchange, they release enough information to make a generic once the patent expires. There are plenty of criticisms of that system that are far off topic from this article. However, patented drugs are not efficiently allocated.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by cshamis ( 854596 )
      This.

  • You're not looking at the right "value" (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Sure, they're of little to no "therapeutic value" but they're cheap to produce and have a high profit margin so they're of high "shareholder value." Welcome to capitalism.
  • they keep Maga's happy in their ranting.
  • I don't go looking for drugs. My doctor assigned drugs as needed. Never asked for a drug I've seen on TV, I've seen the list of side affects and just went nope. And to go a step further, I have NEVER bought 99.99% of anything from ads seen on TV or pop-up ads internet my entire old life !!! Ads are a waste of time for me !

  • You let companies advertise pharmaceuticals on TV? That's an entirely foreign concept to me, since that practice has been banned for decades in most countries in which I have lived.

    I don't ask my doctor if X is right for me, I ask my doctor what's wrong and provide a qualified assessment of how to alleviate my problems.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbengt ( 874751 )

      You let companies advertise pharmaceuticals on TV? That's an entirely foreign concept to me, since that practice has been banned for decades in most countries in which I have lived.

      Prescription drug advertisements used to be banned on TV, and, IIRC, in general anywhere they were aimed at the public rather than the medical professionals. Then Ronald "the-Government-Is-the-Problem" Reagan et. al. came along and lifted the ban. And, with Nancy Reagan's influence, they also loosened the rules about claims ma

  • Tofacitinib/Xeljanz keeps me halfway healthy and able to function after 15 years of progressively worsening rheumatoid arthritis. I've tried the cheap stuff - plaquenil (sun rash and sensitivity) methotrexate (daily cramps and volcanic diarrhea). They stop working after a while and you have to move on to something else. My only real complaint is how much it cost, but otherwise tofacitanib had been a wonder drug for me.

    Necron69

  • Surely, not my jellyfish-based brain supplement? It will still help me maintain my genius IQ of 108, right?

    And what about my copper infused jockstrap? It's still gonna give me that rock hard bod, right?

  • FF (Score:2)

    by ledow ( 319597 )

    Which is why in any civilised country you can't advertise any prescription drug - on TV or anywhere else - except to qualified doctors and pharmacists directly only.

  • You know we have more prescription drugs now
    Every commercial that comes on TV is a prescription drug ad
    I can't watch TV for four minutes without thinking I have five serious diseases
    Like: "Do you ever wake up tired in the mornings?"
    Oh my god, I have this! Write this down. Whatever it is, I have it
    Half the time I don't even know what the commercial is:
    There's people running in fields or flying kites or swimming in the ocean
    Like: "That is the greatest disease ever. How do you get that?
    That disease comes with

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