Prescription drug websites are loosely regulated and often poorly communicate information to consumers, according to a study conducted by Dartmouth linguistics professor Lewis Glinert and Jon Schommer, associate head of the University of Minnesota's department of pharmaceutical care and health systems. Glinert and Schommer called for improved oversight of online drug advertising in a June 28 presentation of the study at the Communication, Medicine and Ethics 2010 Conference at Boston University School of Public Health, according to Glinert.
"The Food and Drug Administration has adopted a hands-off approach to one very big area in drug advertising," Glinert said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
Although a lack of regulation is currently commonplace in the field of medical advertising, oversight must be stricter and better enforced, Glinert said.
"There should be a lot more regulation of these websites and of broadcast ads as well," Glinert said.
While drug companies are not legally allowed to broadcast messages that instruct consumers to buy their product, these companies are permitted to tell consumers to request more information about the particular treatment, according to Glinert.
"You can't say, Buy Pimplex,' but you can say, Ask your doctor about Pimplex," Glinert said. "And you can say it a thousand times, and you can flash it at people. It's a subtle difference."
The FDA is "terribly understaffed" and has experienced a decrease in the number of warning letters sent to companies that potentially violate the law in recent years, Glinert said.
The difference between education and promotion in prescription drug websites is often blurred, which "raises ethical questions," he said.
"It's important for a reader, a viewer, to know when something they're reading is designed to promote a drug," Glinert said. "We're not dealing with soap powder or margarine, we're dealing with potentially dangerous substances."
The current assumption in the medical community is that physicians, acting as intermediaries between drug companies and consumers, provide that information, Glinert said. In reality, he said, that is often not the case.
Individuals have a legal right to information that gives them an accurate indication of the effectiveness of drugs and alternative forms of treatment, according to Glinert.
"More often than not, patients do not go to their physicians and ask them advice about what they have read on the [web]sites," he said.
It is unclear whether or not consumers think drug companies' websites have commercial intentions or not, Glinert said. According to a 2002 Pew Internet Report survey, more than 70 percent of individuals who look for medical information on drug companies' websites said that "you can believe all or most" information they provide, but almost 50 percent said they had left a website because it appeared commercial, he said.
Issues surrounding consumer drug advertising have existed since at least 1997, when the FDA loosened regulations allowing advertisements to directly target consumers, Glinert said.
"The issue is precisely as old as the issue of advertising on the radio and TV," he said.
Drug advertising on websites is a "completely new departure," Glinert said, adding that online advertising was confronted with a set of problems separate from the problems of other broadcast mediums.
Private pharmaceutical companies and other organizations can take an active role in better informing consumers. Gilnert said that an agreement between Google and the National Institute of Health that allows summaries of NIH drug reports to appear when individuals search for a product on Google is evidence that federal agencies and companies can work together to produce greater disclosure in online pharmaceutical advertising.
"If those NIH sites are user-friendly, then it's a big step in the right direction," Glinert said.
Schommer could not be reached for comment by press time.
