Drug advertisements in medical journals: Education or deception?

Advertising in medical journals is used by pharmaceutical companies in combination with visits by sales representatives and detailing aids to deliver and reinforce a message about a medicine in order to increase awareness about the product and increase prescribing. Not only are journal advertisements successful in achieving these goals, but there is also some evidence that physicians who use journal advertisements as an information source prescribe less appropriately. Advertisements consist of four main components: graphs and data, text, references and pictures and images. This presentation will draw on research to demonstrate how each of these elements can be used to convey misleading information about a product. Often social as well as medical dimensions come in to advertisements, such as the portrayal of the relationship between doctors and patients, or the way women or the elderly are portrayed. Additionally, myth and emotive imagery may be used to create an impression of a brand that has little to do with evidence of the product's effects and characteristics. Finally, there are significant quality differences in journal advertising between developing and developed countries that will be explored. Underlying any critical appraisal of advertising, the key question is what the messages and images in the advertisement mean for patient health.