Ask your doctor
Drug maker Pfizer is responsible for saving, let's say, millions of lives। Many of their drugs do really nice things for people, like help them go to the bathroom, keep complicated breast cancer survivors chugging along, and let old people and party boys get it on. But like any pill pusher, Pfizer cares more about its bottom line than patient health, which is why they're such an easy case study for Ways The Pharmaceutical Industry Misleads The Public.
The two big examples making the most-emailed rounds arrive by way of the Wall Street Journal, which likely means Big Pharma isn't depositing the proper toll in Rupert Murdoch's advertising coffers.
Though certainly not the only company guilty of the practice, Pfizer gets fingered for exploiting a loophole in how the Food and Drug Administration regulates pill advertising। When pushing color-coded candy on America, drug makers must list the known serious side effects that can result in patients taking their drug. (In recent years, the FDA appears to have made them slow down the delivery of their dialogue, which means no more fast-talking their way through "may cause heart attacks or strokes" and "do not take if you're pregnant or trying to get pregnant.") But rather than spend 30 of their 60 seconds — and, thus, half their ad budget — telling television audiences about how their drug can be bad for you, Pfizer instead runs an ad talking about whatever condition it happens to have a drug for. Let's take smoking, for example. Pfizer makes the quit-smoking drug Chantix, which has been linked to everything from drowsiness to suicidal tendencies. This is not the sort of thing Pfizer might want to tell you about on the TV, so it put together a veritable PSA about how to quit smoking. Visit the website mentioned in the ad and, look at that, there's some information about Chantix — with the fine print more easily subdued and less noticeable. Brilliant! Also, some say: deceitful! (The website is mytimetoquit.com, but we're opting not to link to it.) Last year, Pfizer sold $883 million worth of Chantix, so you can imagine the fiscal logic here.
The other shady television advertising practice that Pfizer engages in, or used to, is the use of misleading statements delivered by medical professionals। Except to push heart drug and best-selling prescription medication Lipitor, the doctor Pfizer used — Robert Jarvik, the inventor of the artificial heart — wasn't even a practicing physician. This led to unwanted attention from Congress and the medical community, who saw Pfizer trying to trick people into thinking a M.D. who knows something about the heart was actively prescribing the drug he was recommending you take. How to get around it? By enlisting an Average Joe to make the pitch. New Pfizer ads for Lipitor look the same, but the guy shilling for the drug is different; he's John Erlendson, a California talent agent who wasn't taking Lipitor when he had a heart attack — and boy does he wish he had! Though it faces increasing competition from generic heart drugs, Pfizer sold $12.7 billion worth of Lipitor last year.
Can we really blame Pfizer for its advertising practices? Sure, but that'd be like blaming capitalism for all the world's woes. The FDA sets the rules for drug advertising, and it should be expected that a company with a market cap of nearly $130 billion is going to do everything in its power to get around the rules if it means buffering the bottom line. So how to keep companies like Pfizer honest? Stop crossing our fingers thinking they'll do it on their own — and start valuing patient health more than shareholder interests by passing stricter advertising rules.
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