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Alan Cassels notes that disease mongering [9] advertisements for cholesterol-lowering drugs, such as for Pfizer [10]'s Lipitor [11], hype the risk of heart attacks for those people with 'high' cholesterol. Aside from camouflaging 'disease awareness' campaigns behind the name of a patient group [12], Cassels warns that when scientists have analysed the results of a number of studies on a drug "they inevitably find that the drugs show no difference in mortality, when compared against placebo." One Pfizer ad, under an image of a corpse with a toe tag, asked “what would you rather have, a cholesterol test or a final exam?” "What you don’t get in the ads scaring you to see your doc for a cholesterol test," writes Cassels, "is any sense of the dangers these kinds of drugs pose." PR Week reports [13] (sub req'd) that Pfizer has recently awarded the global PR account for promoting Lipitor to Weber Shandwick [14].
Links:
[1] http://dev.prwatch.org/users/7/bob-burton
[2] http://dev.prwatch.org/topics/public-relations/third-party-technique
[3] http://dev.prwatch.org/topics/health
[4] http://dev.prwatch.org/topics/international
[5] http://dev.prwatch.org/topics/marketing
[6] http://dev.prwatch.org/topics/pharmaceuticals
[7] http://dev.prwatch.org/topics/public-relations
[8] http://www.addtoany.com/share_save?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fdev.prwatch.org%2Fspin%2F2006%2F11%2F5393%2Fhyping-heart-attacks&linkname=Hyping%20Heart%20Attacks
[9] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/disease_mongering
[10] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Pfizer
[11] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Lipitor
[12] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/patient_groups
[13] http://www.prweek.com/uk/news/article/601375/Weber-Shandwick-nets-global-Lipitor-business/
[14] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Weber_Shandwick
[15] http://www.commonground.ca/iss/0611184/cg184_Cassels.shtml