The slippery slope to New Zealand
BMJ 2007; 335 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/sbmj.0712438 (Published 01 December 2007) Cite this as: BMJ 2007;335:0712438
- Les Toop, professor1,
- Dee Mangin, senior lecturer1
- 1Department of Public Health and General Practice, University of Otago, Christchurch, New Zealand
The birth control drug mifepristone is advertised on New York subway
The European parliament is considering allowing the drug industry to have a much greater role in providing information to patients, with no restriction on the type of media. After direct to consumer advertising was rejected in 2002, industry and the commercial arm of the European Commission submitted a new proposal to allow communication between industry and patients that deliberately leaves out the word advertising and replaces the term independence (freedom from commercial influence) with objective. Information can be entirely objective and yet still mislead through incompleteness or lack of balance and context. Opponents believe that industry will not, and cannot be expected to, provide balanced, comparative, and comprehensive information, and that the proposals amount to advertising by stealth.
In New Zealand and the US, the only two developed countries that allow direct to consumer advertising of prescription medicines, opposition has grown steadily from both the public and doctors. New Zealand's health system is much closer to those in Europe than the US system. So what can we learn from its experience?
Rise of advertising
Unlike most other developed countries, New Zealand never enacted pre-emptive legislation to prevent direct to consumer advertising. The adverts started appearing in the early 1990s, and steadily increased. But the US Food and Drug Administration's relaxation of regulatory requirements for broadcast advertising in 1997 unleashed an explosion in both the US and New Zealand. Last year drug companies spent over $5bn (2.5bn pound; 3.6bn euro) on direct to consumer advertising in the US and tens of millions of dollars in New Zealand.
Opposition grew alongside the advertising, particularly in the women's movement as …
Log in
Log in using your username and password
Log in through your institution
Subscribe from £184 *
Subscribe and get access to all BMJ articles, and much more.
* For online subscription
Access this article for 1 day for:
£50 / $60/ €56 (excludes VAT)
You can download a PDF version for your personal record.