Study: Sales Reps for Drugs Don’t Talk Enough About Risks
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iStockphoto/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — Pharmaceutical sales representatives rarely inform physicians of a medicine’s potential harmful effects when promoting their wares, according to a new study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
After analyzing 1,692 promotions to 255 primary care physicians in the U.S., Canada, and France, researchers found that promotions included “minimally adequate safety information” less than three percent of the time.
Serious potential problems were mentioned in only six percent of promotions, even though 57 percent of promotions were for drugs that have U.S. Food and Drug Administration “black box” warnings of serious risks.
“Laws in all three countries require sales representatives to provide information on harm as well as benefits,” Barbara Mintzes of the University of British Columbia, the lead author of the study, said in a statement. “But no one is monitoring these visits and there are next to no sanctions for misleading or inaccurate promotion.”
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