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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...
...with a new 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...
...within days. Plus, some of DTC's most vocal critics in Congress aren't calling for an all-out advertising ban. For example, Democratic Representative Bart Stupak of Michigan, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, wants a moratorium on DTC ads during a drug's first two years on the market. "Two years will give the FDA and doctors time to see what safety issues arise once a drug is approved," Stupak says. "It will also allow adequate time to educate doctors on how to use the new drug...
...true power player in the full House Energy and Commerce Committee, chairman Henry Waxman of California, differs from Stupak one key point. Yes, he also supports a two-year DTC moratorium for new drugs. "Americans must face an inconvenient truth about drug safety," he says. "The truth is that we inevitably allow drugs on the market whose risks are not fully known." Waxman, however, insists that the FDA should have the discretion to make exceptions to the moratorium. This policy follows a recommendation that the Institute of Medicine offered in a 2006 report, "The Future of Drug Safety." "It doesn...
This is not a simplistic “us versus them” situation. If disadvantaged minority communities are to make headway, they must fight internal crime, testify against murderers and drug dealers, and collaborate on neighborhood security, including forming organizations to monitor both street gangs and police behavior. But just as minority communities cannot pin everything on the system, police departments must stop perpetuating the idea that they are the “thin blue line” between all that is good and evil. Police must be subject to more substantial review by federal agencies such...