Enough with the pharma ads!

I wanted to share an insightful editorial from this morning's St. Louis Post-Dispatch.  Everyone knows how crazed drug manufacturers are over advertising to consumers.  It's no surprise, since their efforts are successfully undermining physician authority and bloating the industry.

One recent medical study found that advertising is creating markets for drugs that would otherwise not exist. It's one reason that more than half of all insured Americans are taking at least one prescription medication for chronic health problems.

The number of direct-to-consumer ads more than doubled between 2003 and 2007. Among them was a campaign for the cholesterol drug Vytorin...

Ads for the drug, made jointly by Merck and Schering-Plough, were pulled in January after release of a study that showed Vytorin is no more effective at reducing cholesterol build-up than a cheaper drug called Zocor, which is available as a generic.

Merck and Schering-Plough sat on that study for two years, advertising heavily the whole time. Last year, after data had been collected but before it was released, Vytorin rang up sales of $5.1 billion.

The editorial goes on to stress the importance of efforts currently on the legislative agenda.

U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., has sponsored a bill that would ban consumer advertising for the first three years a new drug is on the market. That would give regulators time to better assess its potential risks. The idea is endorsed by Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports.

A Senate committee today will is scheduled to hear testimony on a proposal to require that all drug ads list a telephone number where consumers can file reports about drug side-effects...

The FDA must do a better job of policing drug ads. But it won't until Congress gives it the tools it needs. Lawmakers should do so without delay.

Kudos to the Post-Dispatch editorial board for such a strong endorsement.