Drugmakers need to rein in ads, hearing told

By Susan Heavey

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pharmaceutical companies need to be more responsible in touting products to consumers or else face tighter controls from Congress, a top U.S. Democratic lawmaker said on Thursday.

Rep. Bart Stupak, at a hearing to discuss specific ads by Pfizer Inc, Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co Inc and Schering-Plough Corp, said television commercials in particular use deceptive techniques to push products to potential patients and increase sales.

"It appears that we need to enforce significant restrictions on DTC (direct-to-consumer) ads to protect American consumers from manipulative commercials designed to mislead and deceive for the profit of pharmaceutical companies," said Stupak, head of the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce investigative panel.

The Michigan Democrat said Congress should consider whether ads promoting medicines should be allowed to continue to target consumers in the United States, the only country that allows such marketing except for New Zealand.

"Pharmaceutical companies should consider it a privilege to be allowed to air DTC ads in this country," he said. "We should make sure that pharmaceuticals companies conduct themselves responsibly."

Ruth Day, head of Duke University's Medical Cognition Laboratory, told lawmakers that drug companies use a variety of tactics to highlight a drug's benefits and downplay risks, including fast speech to visual effects.

For example, an ad for Schering-Plough's allergy drug Nasonex featured a bumble bee that flew around as side effects were listed, but simply hovered when benefits were discussed.

"All of these wing flaps and wing flashes and sparkly things essentially divided the attention of the viewers ... and thus led to decreased knowledge" of possible risks, Day said.