UCLA blows the whistle on pharmaceutical ads in medical

Check out the Feb. 15 issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal for a UCLA study reviewing pharmaceutical advertising validity and funding. They found that almost ONE THIRD of the drug ads contained NO references for the medical claims they made. Researchers also examined the funding sources of the research cited in the ads and concluded that most of the "original research" used to support the ads claims was in fact sponsored by pharmaceutical companies.

According to the study, the FDA does "screen" drug ads, but because of the huge volume of ads they are not able to "check" many of the ads. (In 2002, for example, the FDA "screened" more than 34,000 ads for drugs.)

The investigators looked at 438 ads from 10 American medical journals, along with a random sample of 400 references in journal articles from the same publications.

Here's what they found.
Out of 438 ads, 126 included NO references to support the medical claims they made. In the ads that did include a reference, over half cited other journal articles, and 19 percent cited "data-on-file" which is simply an unpublished company document.

When the researchers dug a little deeper, to see if they could actually get their hands on the referenced documents, they could only obtain 20 percent of the "data-on-file" documents. Repeated requests to the pharmaceutical companies yielded 37 out of 88 requests for the data-on-file, however over half of these responses were that "...due to 'company policy' or the proprietary nature of the data, the information requested would not be provided."

"We found that almost one-third of the pharmaceutical ads offered no references at all to support medical claims. In addition, most of the data-on-file documents in support of the medical claims were not available from the drug companies," said Dr. David Schriger, study author and professor of Emergency Medicine at UCLA.

Journal articles fared better--99 percent of the referenced documents were available to the researchers.

What about the funding of these pharmacuetical ads?
Out of 294 ads that claimed to rely on original research, 58 percent were sponsored by a pharmaceutical company or its authors were affiliated with the funding pharmaceutical company. Nineteen percent were government or charity funded, and 23 percent INCLUDED NO FUNDING STATEMENT WHATSOEVER.

Go here to read more.