MB Comment: Big pharma is drooling over revenue streams from developing markets. Marketing restrictions are less onerous than in the US or Europe and they are taking advantage of this with deceptive ad programs described in this article.
It’s their usual strategy, create anxiety about a disease people didn’t know they have, so drug companies can sell them a pharmaceutical solution. Look out citizens of the developing world, big pharma has its marketing machine focused on you.
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Pushing Western medicine with fear in India
‘If you sleep less than six hours a night, you’re increasing your risk of developing or dying from heart disease by 48 percent. At least, that’s what U.S.-based pharmaceutical giant Abbott would have 1.2 billion people in India believe …
“They are implying that taking sleeping pills may help you live longer, whereas the data shows that taking sleeping pills is associated with increased mortality,” said Dr. Daniel F. Kripke, a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Diego.
Industry insiders say the ad points to a bigger problem: According to Benjamin England, an attorney formerly with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), drugmakers have lower standards for how they operate in emerging markets like India and China, where government oversight is poor.
“You already feel like you are in the Wild West,” said England, founder of the international consulting firm FDAImports.com. “There is not likely to be anybody who is going to take them to task.”
“If there is nobody paying that much attention to what people are saying about the product, then they’ll push the envelope and say things they would not have gotten away with here,” he told Reuters Health …
Indeed, Abbott’s ad encourages readers to see their doctor if they can tick off just one of 10 statements, including “I feel sleepy during the day” and “I have a feeling that my sleep is unrefreshing.”
“This is so dramatic and ridiculous,” said Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., who runs PharmedOut, a think tank that studies drugmakers’ influence on prescribing.
“It is really advertising, but it is disguised as education,” she told Reuters Health. “Industry calls it disease awareness, those of us who are public health advocates call it disease-mongering — making people believe that they are sick when they are normal.”
Abbott declined to discuss the purpose of its campaign.’
