cardiologists curtail pharma advertising
At a giant meeting of more than 20,000 cardiologists, nurses and industry types, something’s missing: the ads.
It used to be that you could identify convention-goers by the drug advertisements that were plastered on their bags full of scientific abstracts, on the badges they wore around their necks and on the lanyards from which the badges hung.
Doctors looked “kind of like a Nascar driver,” says Jack Lewin, the chief executive of the American College of Cardiology (ACC), which runs the meeting. “Things have changed,” he says.
The ACC says it sacrificed nearly half a million dollars by getting rid of these ads. Last year, Pfizer paid $175,000 to get its cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor on the convention bags and another $70,000 to plaster Lipitor on the lanyards. Merck and Schering-Plough paid $50,000 to get their rival cholesterol drug, Vytorin, on the data cards that were affixed to every convention-goers badge.
Also missing is a CD that contained digital versions of all the scientific abstracts presented at the meeting; that was also paid for by sponsors in the past. The ACC says that has generated lots of complaints from doctors.
“None of us are invulnerable to advertising-related biases,” says Lewin. “I don’t think we should be walking around with advertisements on our backs.”
Forbes.com 31/3/9