The Pied Piper Effect

A new study out of Harvard debunks the canard that DTC advertising causes a “Pied Piper” effect of patients marching en masse to their physicians demanding drugs they don’t need.

Reuters reports that, “Expensive advertising of prescription drugs directly to consumers may do little to encourage sales, U.S. and Canadian researchers reported on Monday.”

According to the report, even though companies spent an estimated $3 billion in 2005 on such ads in the United States, they did not appear to result in more prescriptions.

"People tend to think that if direct-to-consumer advertising wasn't effective, pharma wouldn't be doing it," HarvardMedicalSchool's Stephen Soumerai said in a statement. "But as it turns out, decisions to market directly to consumers are based on scant data."

The nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation has come to similar conclusions in reports on direct-to-consumer ads.

In an April report the foundation found that 91 percent of adults surveyed had seen or heard advertisements for prescription drugs, but just one-third spoke to a doctor about a drug they saw advertised, and 54 percent of them got a prescription for a different drug.

Among doctors, 76 percent said they sometimes recommend a different prescription drug to a patient who mentions a drug ad and 5 percent said they frequently gave patients the drug.

Here is the complete Reuters story.

Will this study stop the Congressional Pied Pipers who keep piping up about the dangers of DTC? 

Stay tuned.