Are TV Drug Ads Portraying False Information? Get the Facts

A new study looks at how consumers should be wary of watching advertisements and pharmaceuticals on nightly TV news, as six out of 10 claims show there could be potentially misleading information portrayed to the viewer.

Researchers Adrienne E. Faerber of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice and David H. Kreling of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Pharmacy found that potentially misleading claims are prevalent throughout consumer-targeted prescription and non-prescription drug advertisements via television.

The past 15 years, both researchers and policymakers have debated whether drug advertisements inform consumers regarding new drugs or persuade consumers in order to take medicines that they may not need.

"Healthcare consumers need unrestricted access to high-quality information about health," said Faerber of The Dartmouth Institute, via a press release "but these TV drug ads had misleading statements that omitted or exaggerated information. These results conflict with arguments that drug ads are helping inform consumers."

Background information from the study shows that pharmaceutical companies have spent 4.8 billion in 2009, surpassing consumer promotion for the nonprescription products of $3 billion that year.

For the study, researchers looked at information from the Vanderbilt TV News archive, an indexed archive of recordings of the nightly news broadcast on ABC, CBS, and NBC since 1968 and on CNN since 1992. Researchers viewed advertisements in the 6:30 p.m. EST period as the nightly news is often a time when many drug advertisers promote prescriptions via older audiences.

The researchers reviewed 168 TV advertisements for prescription and over-the-counter drugs that aired between 2008 and 2010, identifying statements that were strongly emphasized in the ads. A team of trained analysts looked at classified ads that could have been potentially misleading.

Surprisingly, they found that only 1 in 10 claims were false.

As the Food and Drug Administration oversees prescription drug advertising while the Federal Trade Commission oversees advertising for nonprescription drugs, the FDA and FTC have differing definitions of false and misleading claims.

The study concludes with the following, via a press release. "The researchers said there were some limitations in the study method: the sample was drawn from a 30-minute period of the TV broadcast day on four major networks, and does not represent all ads on TV. Also, they only analyzed what they determined as the most-emphasized claim in each advertisement and the coders need to interpret the meaning of claims to facilitate analysis, which did introduce subjectivity."

"Healthcare consumers need unrestricted access to high-quality information about health, "said Faerber of The Dartmouth Institute, via a release. "Consumers may see up to 30 hours of television drug advertising each year, while only spending 15 to 20 minutes, on average, at each visit with their primary care physician."

What do you think?

More information regarding the study can be found via the Journal of General Internal Medicine.