Hidden in plain sight

American Journal of Public Health

Volumn 100, Issue 5, 2010, Pages 793-803

  Greene, Jeremy A ^a   Herzberg, David ^b  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

PRESCRIPTION DRUG;

ADVERTIZING; ARTICLE; CONSUMER; DRUG INDUSTRY; ECONOMICS; ETHICS; HISTORY; HUMAN; METHODOLOGY; PERSUASIVE COMMUNICATION; PUBLIC HEALTH; PUBLIC RELATIONS; UNITED STATES;

ADVERTISING AS TOPIC; CONSUMER PARTICIPATION; DRUG INDUSTRY; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HUMANS; PERSUASIVE COMMUNICATION; PRESCRIPTION DRUGS; PUBLIC HEALTH; PUBLIC RELATIONS; UNITED STATES;

EID: 77951218952     PISSN: 00900036     EISSN: 15410048     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2009.181255     Document Type: Article

References (84)

1. J. M. Donohue, M. Cevasco, and M. B. Rosenthal, "A. Decade of Direct-to-Consumer Advertising of Prescription Drugs," New England Journal of Medicine 357, no.7 (2007): 673-681. (Pubitemid 47267237)
2. J.M. Donohue, "Direct to Consumer Advertising of Prescription Drugs: Does It Add to the Overuse and Inappropriate Use of Prescription Drugs or Alleviate Underuse?" International Journal of Pharmaceutical Medicine 20, no.1 (2006): 17-24. DTC advertising of prescription drugs is, for the most part, a unique feature of American public health policy; although the European Union is currently debating a motion that would allow drug manufacturers to provide pamphlets of "nonpromotional" materials directly to consumers, apart from New Zealand, the United States remains the only county that explicitly permits the DTC promotion of pharmaceuticals. "Public Consultation (MLX 358): The European Commission Proposals on Information to Patients for Prescription Medicines," available at http://www.mhra.gov.uk/Publications/ Consultations/Medicinesconsultations/MLXs/CON046657 (accessed July 26, 2009).
3. A.F. Holmer, "Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Advertising Builds Bridges Between Patients and Physicians," Journal of the American Medical Association 281, no.4 (1999): 380-382. (Pubitemid 29061046)
4. B. Mintzes, M.L. Barer, R.L. Kravitz, et al., "Influence of Direct to Consumer Pharmaceutical Advertising and Patients' Requests on Prescribing Decisions: Two Site Cross Sectional Survey," British Medical Journal 324 (2002): 278-279;
5. D. A. Kessler and D. A. Levy, "Direct to Consumer Drug Advertising: Is It Too Late to Manage the Risks?" Annals of Family Medicine 5, no.1 (2007): 4-5.
6. W.L. Pines, "A History and Perspective on Direct-to-Consumer Advertising," Food and Drug Law Journal 54 (1999): 489-518;
7. M.S. Wilkes, R.A. Bell, and R.L. Kravitz, "Direct to Consumer Prescription Drug Advertising: Trends, Impact, and Implications," Health Affairs 19 (2000): 110-128;
8. F.B. Palumbo and C. D. Mullins, "The Development of Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Advertising Regulation," Food and Drug Law Journal 57, no.3 (2002): 423-443;
9. J. Donohue, "A History of Drug Advertising: The Evolving Roles of Consumers and Consumer Protection," Milbank Quarterly 84, no.4 (2006): 659-699.
10. J. Greene, Prescribing by Numbers: Drugs and the Definition of Disease (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007).
11. A. S. Kesselheim and J. Avorn, "The Role of Litigation in Defining Drug Risks," Journal of the American Medical Association 297, no.3 (2007): 308-311.
12. C.S. Landefeld and M.A. Steinman, "The Neurontin Legacy: Marketing Through Misinformation and Manipulation," New England Journal of Medicine 360, no.2(2009): 103-106.
13. D. Healy, "Shaping the Intimate: Influences on the Experience of Everyday Nerves," Social Studies of Science 34 (2004): 219-245;
14. C. Elliott, "Pharma Goes to the Laundry: Public Relations and the Business of Medical Education," Hastings Center Report 34 (2004): 18-23;
15. B. Moffatt and C. Elliott, "Ghost Marketing: Pharmaceutical Companies and Ghostwritten Journal Articles," Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 50 (2007): 18-31;
16. S. Podolsky and J. Greene, "Pharmaceutical Promotion and Physician Education in Historical Perspective," Journal of the American Medical Association 300, no.7 (2008): 831-833;
17. D. Herzberg, Happy Pills in America: From Miltown to Prozac (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009).
18. J.H. Young, The Toadstool Millionaires: A Social History of Patent Medicines in the United States Before Federal Regulation (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1961);
19. N. Tomes, "The Great American Medicine Show Revisited," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 79, no.4 (2005): 627-663.
20. J. Liebenau, Medical Science and Medical Industry: The Formation of the American Pharmaceutical Industry (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987).
21. N. Rasmussen, On Speed: The Many Lives of Amphetamines (New York: New York University Press, 2008).
22. R. Weicker, "Fights Self-Medication," Printer's Ink, October 11, 1934, 12.
23. B. Hansen, Picturing Medical Progress From Pasteur to Polio: A History of Mass Media Images and Popular Attitudes in America (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2009);
24. J. Metzl and J. Howell, "Great Moments: Authenticity, Ideology, and the Telling of Medical 'History'," Literary History 25, no.2 (2006): 502-521.
25. C.B. Larrabee, "How Parke, Davis, Advertises Without: Losing Its Ethical Standing," Printer's Ink, August 9, 1928: 105-113, quote on 105-106.
26. As quoted in R. Marchand, Creating the Corporate Soul (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 177.
27. J. A. Greene, "Pharmaceutical Marketing Research and the Prescribing Physician," Annals of Internal Medicine 146, no.10 (2007): 742-748.
28. J.A. Greene and S. H. Podolsky, "Keeping Modern in Medicine: Pharmaceutical Promotion and Physician Education in Postwar America," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 83, no.2 (2009): 331-377.
29. W. E. Jenkins, "Public Relations," in Pharmaceutical Marketing Orientation Seminar, ed. R.G. Kedersha, 145-148, quote on 146 (New York: Pharmaceutical Advertising Club of New York, 1959).
30. Dominique Tobbell, "Allied Against Reform: Pharmaceutical Industry-Academic Physician Relations in the United States, 1945-1970," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82, no.4 (2008): 878-912;
31. E. A. Fones-Wolf, Setting Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1994).
32. Public Relations Primer for the Drug Industry (Washington, DC: American Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association, 1953).
33. M. Woodward, "The Facts Behind the Story: Pharmaceutical Public Relations," Bulletin of the Medical Library Association 46, no.1 (1958): 53-59.
34. The Health News Institute (HNI) defined public relations as "the management function which evaluates public attitudes, identifies the policies and procedures of an individual or an organization with the public interest and executes a program of action to earn public understanding and acceptance." In M. Woodward, "The Facts Behind the Stoiy: Pharmaceutical Public Relations," Bulletin of the Medical Library Association 46, no.1 (1958): 53-59.
35. The assistant executive director of the HNI described his job as being to "present a friendly and true picture" of a "high type industry and a high type profession" (p. 55). When faced with someone "a little hot under the collar about a problem," he said, his firm "transposa[s] that problem so that it doesn't sound quite as bad or look quite as bad ... by the time it gets to the other party or parties concerned, it isn't a problem anymore" (p. 56). "The press," he noted, "is becoming more and more cooperative with us all the time" (p. 58). This activity served multiple audiences: in addition to addressing the special concerns of physicians and pharmacists, and of consumers of prescription and nonprescription pharmacy products, it also served as an arena for the industry to lobby against perceived political threats. As Mickey Smith explained in his 1968 textbook of pharmaceutical marketing, public relations occupied a distinct sphere from product promotion, "much involved with 'image' creation and in the drug industry, it must be admitted, most of these activities have been defensive in nature-aimed at combating bad publicity or answering the charges of a Congressional Investigation."
36. See M. C. Smith, Pharmaceutical Marketing (Philadelphia, PA: Lea & Febiger, 1968), 315.
37. Diphenhydramine was synthesized in 1943 by George Rieveschl, a lecturer at the University of Cincinnati and a researcher with Parke, Davis & Company who would eventually become vice president for commercial development at Parke, Davis; the drug was launched under the brand name Benadryl in 1946 as the first popular oral antihistamine and remained under patent until 1964.
38. See also W. Sneader, Drug Prototypes and Their Exploitation (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1996), 654.
39. Time magazine, March 15, 1963, cited in US Senate, Committee on Government Operations, Subcommittee on Reorganization and International Organizations, Interagency Coordination in Drug Research and Regulation (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1964), 1275-1279.
40. The Relaxed Wife, 1957, film sponsored by Roerig (J.|B.) & Co, a division of Charles Pfizer & Co Inc, available at http://www.archive.org/ details/RelaxedW1957 (accessed August 18, 2009).
41. "Tranquil Pills Stir Up Doctors," Business Week, June 18, 1958, 28-30.
42. See also D. Herzberg, Happy Pills; Andrea Tone, Age of Anxiety: A History of America's Turbulent Affair With Tranquilizers (New York: Basic Books, 2008).
43. T. Whiteside, "Getting There First With Tranquility; Don't-Give-a-Damn Pills," Time. February 27, 1956, 98;
44. "Pills vs Worry-How Goes the Frantic Quest for Calm in Frantic Lives?" Newsweek, May 21, 1956, 68-70;
45. "Happiness by Prescription," Time, March 11, 1957, 59
46. See also Herzberg, Happy Pills; Tone, Age of Anxiety.
47. "New Way to Calm a Cat," Life, April 18, 1960, 93-95;
48. "Tranquil but Alert," Time, March 7, 1960, 47.
49. See also Herzberg, Happy Pills.
50. 'Techniques Used by MPIB for non-Paid-Advertising Promotion of Drug Products in the Press and on Radio and Television," Senate Anti-Trust and Monopoly, Drugs (hereafter cited as SATMD), Accession 71A 5170, Box 6, Record Group 46, National Archives Building, Washington, DC.
51. For examples from the National Archives, see Tranquilizer Drags-An Identification (New York: Health News Institute, January 15, 1960), SATMD Box 6; radio interview with William Apple, the executive secretary of the American Pharmaceutical Association, and Francis Brown, president of Schering Corporation, on American Forum of the Air, Westinghouse Broadcasting Company, February 1, 1960, SATMD Box 19.
52. "Techniques Used by MPIB."
53. "Techniques Used by MPIB."
54. D. Cooley, "The New Nerve Pills and Your Health," Cosmopolitan, January 1956, 72.
55. See also, for example, "Pills for the Mind," Time, June 1, 1956, 54;
56. D. Cooley, "The New Drags That Make You Feel Better," Cosmopolitan, September 1956, 24-27.
57. "Thumbnail Sketches of Writers and Others Whom MPIB Paid for Preparing Backgrounders, Brochures, Technical Memoranda, etc.," SATMD box 5.
58. See also Herzberg, Happy Pills.
59. This paragraph and the one that follows have been adapted from D. Herzberg, "Will Wonder Drugs Never Cease!": A Prehistory of Direct-to-Consumer Advertising," Pharmacy in History 51, no. 2 (2009): 51.
60. L. Galton, "Aureomycin: It Fights Germs Penicillin Won't," Better Homes and Gardens, April 1949, 10-12, 307;
61. L. Galton, "Good News for Hay Fever and Asthma Victims," Better Homes and Gardens, July 1957, 26;
62. L. Galton, "The Amazing Drug That Helps High Blood Pressure," Pageant, April 1958, 96-99.
63. L. Galton, "A New Drug Brings Relief for the Tense and Anxious," Cosmopolitan, August 1955, 82-83.
64. D. Cooley, "Will Wonder Drugs Never Cease!" Better Homes and Gardens, March 1955, 34, 37-38, 222;
65. D. Cooley, "New Victories Predicted for Medicine!" Better Homes and Gardens, September 1955, 18;
66. D. Cooley, "New Drug That Awakens Energies!" Better Homes and Gardens, October 1957, 18; "Thumbnail Sketches of Writers and Others."
67. D. Cooley, "The New Nerve Pills and Your Health," Cosmopolitan, January 1956, 68-75.
68. Public Law 82-215, 65 stat 648, as quoted in J. Donahue, "A. History of Drug Advertising," 667;
69. H. Marks, "Revisiting 'The Origins of Compulsory Drug Prescriptions,' " American Journal of-Public Health 85, no.1 (1995): 109-116.
70. Palumbo and Mullins, "Development of Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Advertising Regulation," 428.
71. "The Detail Man and the Law: Oral Presentations to MDs Can Make Company Liable Linder FDA Res; Sterling Lawyer Spells Do's and Don'ts to the Bar," F-D-C Reports (February 8, 1965): 20-21;
72. see also Podolsky and Greene, "Pharmaceutical Promotion and Physician Education."
73. Monopoly. Competitive Problems in the Drug Industry, Part 125 (Washington, DC: US Senate Select Committee on Small Business, 1976).
74. ES. Walkins, "'Doctor, Are You Trying Tb Kill Me?': Ambivalence About the Patient Package Insert for Estrogen," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 76, no.1 (2002): 84-104.
75. Pines, "History and Perspective on Direct-to-Consumer Advertising."
76. L.A. Morris and L.G. Millstein, "Drug Advertising to Consumers: Effects of Formats for Magazine and Television Advertisements," Food and Drug Late Journal 497 (1984): 497-503.
77. L. A. Morris, D. Brinberg, R. Kimberg, C. Rivers, and L. G. Millstein, "The Attitudes of Consumers Toward Direct Advertising of Prescription Drugs," Public Health Reports 101 (1986): 82-89.
78. L. R. Bradley and J.M. Zito, "Direct, to Consumer Prescription Drug Advertising," Medical Care 35, no.1 (1997): 86-92.
79. Palumbo and Mullins, "Development of Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Advertising Regulation," 423.
80. K. R. Feather to J. P Aterno, Pfizer Inc, July 13, 1982, as cited in Pines, "History and Perspective on Direct-to-Consumer Advertising," 495.
81. K. R. Feather to J. P Aterno, "History and Perspective on Direct-to-Consumer Advertising,"
82. For example, see L. M. Schwartz, S. Woloshin, and H. G. Welch, "Communicating Drug Benefits and Harms With a Drug Facts Box: Two Randomized Trials," Annals of Internal Medicine 150, no.8 (2009): 563-564;
83. J. Avorn and W.H. Shrank, "Communicating Drug Benefits and Risks Effectively: There Must Be a Better Way," Annals of Internal Medicine 150, no.8 (2009): 563-564.
84. The FDA budget for fiscal year 2007 was $1.95 billion. Food and Drug Administration, "Performance Budget Overview 2007, FDA FY 2005-1007," available at http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/ReportsManualsForms/ Reports/BudgetReports/2007FDABudgetSummary/ucm121045.htm (accessed October 28, 2009).