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Bristol-Myers Squibb Announces a Self-imposed
Ban on Drug Ads
By
Stephanie Saul
Drug maker Bristol-Myers
Squibb said this week that it had imposed a ban on advertising
its new drugs to consumers in their first year on the market, adopting
voluntary restrictions that go further than what is anticipated
in an industry-wide advertising code to be announced next month.
The company said it wanted to give doctors time to understand
new products before patients begin asking for them.
"We
want to make sure that before we start mass media - television,
radio and print branded advertising - that physicians have a level
of comfort about the treatment and which patients are appropriate
for it," Brian Henry, a spokesman for Bristol-Myers, said.
The
12-month ban is part of a new
advertising code the company posted on its Web site
yesterday. 
Despite
the growing backlash against direct-to-consumer advertising of pharmaceuticals,
Mr. Henry said the company is not aware of any similar codes in
the industry.
In
the eight years since the Food and Drug Administration lifted a
prohibition on consumer advertising, drug ads have become a $3.8
billion business. The constant drumbeat of spots, mostly on television,
is so effective that patients demand prescriptions from their doctors,
and some critics accuse the physicians of obliging even though the
drugs might not be best for the patient.
The
practice has become particularly controversial in the last year
in the wake of disclosures that the prescription painkillers known
as cox-2 inhibitors were linked to cardiac problems. Advertising
and marketing played a role in the widespread use of two of the
drugs, Vioxx and Celebrex, by many patients who would have done
just as well with less expensive over-the-counter remedies, critics
have said.
The
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the trade
group, is expected to adopt its industrywide code next month, but
apparently will stop short of embracing anything like the 12-month
moratorium on advertising new drugs.
"We
believe passionately that patients have a right to know about new
drugs which may save their lives or improve the quality of their
lives," said Ken Johnson, a spokesman for the trade group,
known as PhRMA. Mr. Johnson said that the "finishing touches"
were being put on the new code, but he would not divulge its contents.
The
chief executive of Bristol-Myers, Peter R. Dolan, is slated to become
chairman of the industry trade group next year. Mr. Dolan's company
has been working to improve its image in the wake of investigations
of its accounting practices by the Justice Department and the Securities
and Exchange Commission.
Direct-to-consumer
advertising became an issue in last year's presidential campaign,
with the Democrats holding drug advertising partly responsible for
ever-increasing prescription costs and inflation in the nation's
health care bills. Lawmakers, both at the federal and state levels,
have also embraced the issue.
One
bill pending in Congress, sponsored by Representative James P. Moran,
a Democrat from Virginia, would ban the broadcast of all erectile
dysfunction ads from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., a measure partly aimed at
limiting the exposure to children of the suggestive content of ads
for Viagra, Cialis and Levitra.
In
addition to placing a 12-month moratorium on consumer advertising
of new drugs, Bristol-Myers' code calls for advertising to "appropriate
audiences at appropriate times of the day" - a section apparently
influenced by ubiquitous erectile dysfunction advertising.
The
code also said that all company ads will inform poor patients that
assistance programs are available to help them get medications.
Bristol-Myers is based in New York.
Reprinted
with permission from the New York Times on the web © The New York
Times Company.
06/17/05
Source
The
New York Times. June
15, 2005.
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