RESEARCH - Doctors influenced by mention of drug ads

May 1, 2005

Doctors Influenced By Mention Of Drug Ads

Offbeat Study Finds Familiar Brand Name Can Evoke Diagnosis

By Shankar Vedantam and Marc Kaufman

Washington Post Staff Writers

Wednesday, April 27, 2005; Page A01

Actors pretending to be patients with symptoms of stress and fatigue were

five times as likely to walk out of doctors' offices with a prescription

when they mentioned seeing an ad for the heavily promoted antidepressant

Paxil, according an unusual study being published today.

The study employed an elaborate ruse -- sending actors with fake symptoms

into 152 doctors' offices to see whether they would get prescriptions. Most

who did not report symptoms of depression were not given medications, but

when they asked for Paxil, 55 percent were given prescriptions, and 50

percent received diagnoses of depression.

The study adds fuel to the growing controversy over the estimated $4 billion

a year the drug industry spends on such advertising. Many public health

advocates have long complained about ads showing happy people whose lives

were changed by a drug, and now voices in Congress, the Food and Drug

Administration and even the pharmaceutical industry are asking whether

things have gone too far.

Nearly every industrialized country bans such advertising, and physicians

said the new study raises new questions.

" It is a haphazard approach to health promotion that is driven primarily by

the pharmaceutical industry's interest in turning a profit, " said F.

Hollon, an internist at the University of Washington in Seattle, who wrote

an editorial accompanying the study in today's Journal of the American

Medical Association. " The most overlooked problem in the health care system

today is the extent to which it is permeated by avarice. "

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