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Pharmaceuticals advertising: a bitter blow

Pfizer has been sanctioned in France for sending out a misleading letter to health professionals. The letter has been banned and Pfizer was forced to send out a rectification.

In France, drugs advertising aimed at health professionals is subject to scrutiny not before but after its dissemination. Sanctions are generally limited to the ban on the advertisement being recorded in the Journal Officiel, often when the campaign is already over. Only Prescrire, which is independent of the pharmaceutical industry, informs its readers of these bans. One drug advertisement however was sanctioned more heavily, with the company forced to send out a rectification to all doctors and pharmacists. The offending letter was sent out by Pfizer last September to health professionals, claiming that its drug Celebrex° (celecoxib) offered a positive benefit-harm balance. Pfizer was trying to promote its nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory COX-2 inhibitor, after Merck withdrew Vioxx° (rofecoxib) from the market due to its cardiovascular toxicity. Pfizer was obviously hoping to capture the Vioxx° market by reassuring health professionals that Celebrex° was safe. The French drugs regulatory agency banned the letter, stating that "the claim that Celebrex was shown to be safe from a cardiovascular point of view …] was misleading". Which goes to show that the government can indeed take action, when it is threatened with being held to account over its responsibility in the COX-2 inhibitor disaster.

©Prescrire March 2005

Source: "Publicité : une interdiction cinglante" Rev Prescrire 2005 ; 25 (259) : 192.

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