Congress inadvertently reveals a dirty little secret about new drugs

I think the average consumer would be surprised and probably even shocked to realize that any new drug that hits the market comes with a big question mark in the safety column.

And now Congress has made that official. Sort of.

Every now and then, our legislators toss around the idea of restricting direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of any new drug for the first two years after the drug’s approval. And one of the reasons behind this thinking is that maybe millions of dollars shouldn’t be poured into advertising for powerful drugs with unknown safety issues.

So the U.S. Congressional Budget Office recently studied the matter and issued a brief stuffed with dry stats and a lot of dry blah blah blah.

But on the topic of public health, the brief has an eye-opening insight.

Making an argument AGAINST a two-year DTC moratorium, the CBO notes that without advertising, fewer consumers would know about any new drug, so fewer would use it. The result: It would take longer for the drug’s risks to be fully known.

In other words, line up those big crowds of guinea pigs and get them using the drug right away so we can figure out just how bad it really is.

Sources:
“The Hidden Price of Drugs” Andrew Pollack, New York Times, 5/31/11, prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com
“The Upside & Downside of a DTC Moratorium” Ed Silverman, Pharmalot, 5/31/11, pharmalot.com