Companiese that advertise prescription drugs directly to consumers may not get as much bang for their buck as they - or their critics - assume. Direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of drugs is only permitted in the US and New Zealand and has long been controversial. Both proponents and opponents assume the ads increase prescriptions, with the former arguing they benefit society by raising awareness of diseases and available treatments and the latter that they pump up demand for drugs unnecessarily.

The objective of the study was to assess the impact of direct to consumer advertising of prescription drugs in the United States on Canadian prescribing rates for three heavily marketed drugs—etanercept, mometasone, and tegaserod.

Original Source

The Infant Milk Substitutes, Feeding Bottles and Infant Foods (Regulation of Production, Supply and Distribution) Act, 1992 attempted to curb the efforts of baby food manufacturers to undermine breastfeeding and was further amended in 2003 to plug loopholes. However, public-private health partnerships are now found to be advocating nutrition policies aimed at helping food multinationals increase their markets. A stronger legislation is thus needed to fight this practice.

Two billionaires

Melody Petersen covered the pharmaceutical beat for The New York Times for four years. In 1997, her investigative reporting won a Gerald Loeb Award, one of the highest honors in business journalism. She is the author of Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs (2008).(An interview with Melody Petersen)

Scientific evidence from hundreds of studies over the past 25 years confirms that breastfeeding