• Chicago Tribune, Monday, June 5, 2006 12 PM

Direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs is coming under fire from an influential group of people intimately involved in the process of putting pharmaceuticals into the hands of patients--doctors. Later this month, the American Medical Association--the largest professional association of physicians in the U.S.--will consider a proposal to support a government moratorium on pharmaceutical advertising to consumers. Last year the group declined to support the moratorium and instead mounted a study of the issue, which has now been completed. It recommends that the AMA support a "time interval" that would put an unspecified amount of time between a drug's approval and when a company could begin advertising to consumers, specifically on television. Doctors claim DTC ads get in the way of the doctor-patient relationship while also contributing to rising health-care costs because patients usually ask for the latest, most expensive, brand-name drug. They also say they're frustrated when patients visit their offices and ask about drugs the doctors either know nothing about or have not had time to evaluate through medical journals or scientific studies. "[Direct-to-consumer] advertisements for newly approved" prescription drugs should "not be run until physicians have been appropriately educated about the drug," the AMA resolution says. The proposal will be debated June 10-14 at the AMA annual meeting in Chicago.

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