CHICAGO, June 21-The American Medical Association was highly critical today of direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs, but the doctors' group stopped short of supporting a ban on the ads.
In voting today, the AMA's policy-making House of Delegates rejected several proposals that called on the AMA to support a ban on direct-to-consumer advertising or to lobby for tighter controls of the ads.
Instead, the AMA House handed the contentious issue to its Council on Science and Public Health, directing it to deliver a detailed report on the issue at the next AMA meeting in December.
In a testimony during a hearing that considered the advertising proposals, delegates waxed eloquently over the pros and cons of the plethora of erectile dysfunction and overactive bladder ads on television and in magazines.
Arguing the drug industry position, Paul Antony, M.D., chief medical officer of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) in Washington, told the committee that about 61 million visits to doctors' offices in 2005 could be traced to advertisements of prescription drugs on television.
"However, only about 13% of the patients who sought a specific drug from the television ad actually ended up having that drug prescribed," Dr. Antony said, suggesting that doctors were not overwhelmingly driven to write a scrip for the advertised product.
But the use of television did not sit well with others. Edwin Harvie Jr., M.D., a delegate from Danville, Va., "Direct-to-consumer advertising is unethical and it is important that we declare it as such," he said.