Word: directous
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These are questions that keep drug companies, as well as the television stations and magazines that subsist on their ad dollars, up at night (Ambien, anyone?). Direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising by pharmaceutical companies has always been somewhat controversial. The U.S. is one of only two countries that permit it (New Zealand is the other). Critics claim that these advertisements encourage consumers to seek out overly expensive brand-name drugs from doctors. Their symptoms might not require such medications, and when they do, cheaper generic drugs may be available. Such marketing probably drives up overall health-care costs. More important...
...President who has vowed to fight Big Pharma to lower drug costs and a Democratic Congress with several anti-DTC advocates, drug and media companies are justifiably jittery. "We are entering an environment that is going to be more open to those who are adamantly opposed to direct-to-consumer advertising," says Jay Bolling, president of Roska Healthcare Advertising in Montgomery...
...bottom line of drug companies. But it wouldn't be devastating. "I don't think it will have a particularly big impact," says Eric Schmidt, equity analyst at Cowen and Co., an investment bank. "The companies have already started scaling back their marketing budgets, and they've tended to direct advertising into more established brands." According to Jon Swallen, a research analyst at TNS Media Intelligence, pharmaceutical companies spent about $4.7 billion in magazine and television advertising in 2008, a 10.7% drop from 2007. And only about 15% of DTC ads are for drugs that are less than a year...
...Here’s some “context” Kennedy skipped: when Israel launched its preemptive strike in 1967, it was under direct threat from Soviet-backed Arab states that had blockaded Israel’s shipping routes—an act of war under international law. Arab states still refused peace, negotiations, or recognition of Israel until Egypt agreed to peace with Israel in 1978 and duly recovered its territory...
...plans to deploy a missile-interceptor system on Russia's doorstep in Poland and the Czech Republic; it also expects the new team in Washington to abandon the Bush Administration's effort to press reluctant European allies to admit Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. But Russia also has a direct interest in the outcome in Afghanistan. Moscow has made clear that a NATO failure in Afghanistan would be a disaster for Moscow, because a Taliban victory would spur an Islamist challenge all along Russia's southern flank. Better to have NATO stop the jihadists than to have to rely...