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Pharmacists across Australia yet again roll their eyes as a thinly veiled advertisement for a "new" medication is featured on news or current affairs programs. If it's not a new contraceptive pill, it's an advertisement for another prescription only medication. Strangely many of these "new" products are years old and merely have new indications or presentations. Australia currently does not allow advertising of prescription only medications, but has relaxed the restrictions on pharmacist-only medications in recent years. Is this the next step to brace us for the full introduction of Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) advertising of all pharmaceuticals?

The European Parliament voted overwhelmingly in late 2002 to throw out proposals which would have allowed DTC "disease education" campaigns for HIV/AIDS, diabetes and asthma.
It was widely feared that this would have been the first step towards DTC advertising of pharmaceuticals themselves, and the range of diseases expanded.
This could be considered a win for those who don't want DTC advertising.

New Zealand is currently the subject of a campaign by Australian-based Healthy Skepticism (http://www.healthyskepticism.org).
This group promotes the evidence-based use of medications and argues against the biased advertising and promotion of pharmaceuticals.
The campaign encourages the New Zealand Prime Minister and Health Minister to ban DTC advertising in the interests of reducing inappropriate medication use, and the resultant patient harm that can occur. You can find on their website an open letter which you can copy and send/email to the relevant people in New Zealand to add pressure to the campaign.

Healthy Skepticism was formerly known as MaLAM (Medical Lobby for Appropriate Marketing) and was established in 1983.
Originally they aimed their campaigns at developing countries where less regulated marketplaces created greater opportunities for patient harm due to misleading drug promotion.
In more recent times it has spread its campaigns worldwide, as shown by the current campaign in New Zealand.

Healthy Skepticism now has subscribers in over 20 countries.
You can get a free subscription to some of their publications but full access to their website and all materials costs $75/year.

Taking a different approach to tackling the marketing of the pharmaceutical giants is US-based No Free Lunch (http://www.nofreelunch.org).
This group targets doctors and other health professionals and urges them to rid themselves of drug company influence.
While their activities are mostly confined to North America at the moment it wouldn't be a surprise to see similar activities here.

One tongue in cheek promotion was offering a free "No Free Lunch" pen in return for doctors returning all the freebie pens given out by drug companies (which then get donated to charities).
They offer other tactics to help health professionals ensure that their own practice is divorced from the influence of pharmaceutical companies.
They provide links to journal articles where the effects of pharmaceutical promotion are studied.

One interesting statistic from the No Free Lunch website is that only 39% of prescribers interviewed in a 2001 study said drug company promotion had any influence on their own practice, but 84% of prescribers said it had at least some influence on the practices of other prescribers!
So who is fooling who?

For more facts like these, the No Free Lunch website is well worth the visit.