Are You Being Manipulated?

From the Los Angeles Times via Yahoo! News: "TV Ads for Drugs Help Boost Prescriptions, Researchers Say," by Alan Zarembo

Doctors are easily persuaded to prescribe antidepressants — often unnecessarily — when patients mention having seen them in television advertisements, researchers reported Tuesday.

In an unusual experiment in which actresses posed as patients, doctors were five times more likely to write them prescriptions after the patients inquired about a specific antidepressant, Paxil. The actresses pretended to have a mild form of depression, a condition that does not require antidepressants.

The study, published in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Assn., suggests that direct-to-consumer advertising — on which pharmaceutical companies spend roughly $3 billion a year — can trump medical need in influencing how doctors prescribe drugs.

--Posted by Madison County Illinois class action attorney T. Evan Schaeffer of Schaeffer & Lamere, P.C.