Better the devil you know than the doctor you don't: is advertising drugs to doctors more harmful than advertising to patients?

Abstract

Most countries ban the advertising of prescription medication directly to consumers, yet allow drug companies to promote drugs to doctors intensively. Such a differential treatment of promotion cannot be justified on economic grounds, but is a result of paternalism in health care regulation, which portrays patients as gullible and doctors as perfect agents. Instead, there should be a complete deregulation of direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising and doctors ought to be required to reveal their relationships with drug companies. This is particularly apt, given the calls for similar transparency rules to address the potential conflict of interest between drug companies and researchers.