US aims to tighten rules on direct-to-consumer drug ads

With a new Congress controlled by the Democratic Party, the US biotech industry might be facing tighter restrictions on direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising. This spring, Congress is set to debate measures that include a two-year moratorium on advertising for newly approved products and higher user fees for extra Food and Drug Administration (FDA) staff to monitor television, print and radio advertisements.

The US and New Zealand are the only countries that allow DTC drug advertising, and such ads pumped $4.5 billion into the US media economy in 2006, up from $2.8 billion in 2002, according to the drug and biotech industries.

However, over the past several years—and after the spectacular safety failure in 2004 of a heavily advertised and top-selling drug, the COX-2 inhibitor Vioxx (rofecoxib)—calls have grown louder for more government control.

"The ads have limited educational value and may oversell the benefits of drugs in ways that might conflict with promoting...health," says Dominick Frosch, assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In the January/February issue of the Annals of Family Medicine, Frosch and colleagues published an analysis of television drug ads, concluding that 95% of analyzed ads appealed to emotion and none mentioned lifestyle changes as an alternative to a pill.