Abstract: Direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical
advertising (DTC-PA) is designed to present new drugs in an appealing light,
typically by depicting healthy, happy individuals as emblematic of the
advertised drug’s potential effects. These advertisements promote products
intended to address serious matters of life, health, stigma, and well-being,
domains of profound concern to patients. Research shows that DTC-PA succeeds in
influencing both patients and providers. The dominant U.S. regulatory
approach has been to permit such advertising under conditions of content
restriction—e.g., requiring risk disclosures and mandating certain qualifying
statements. I argue the nature of false hope suggests that such controls are
limited: the very nature of false hope is that the individuals are fixated on
an unlikely but highly desired possible outcome. Contraindications hold little
or no sway on a person attending to the hoped-for outcome. All a person sees
while watching an advertisement is someone with his or her condition who is
healthy and happy on account of the drug; the qualifications and possible side
effects are attentionally powerless. Therefore, the solution, I argue, is that
DTC-PA be banned. This is because false hope harms people and collectives, DTC
pharmaceutical advertising fosters false hope, and it is wrong to harm people.
Christopher
Bobier is an
associate professor of foundational sciences at Central Michigan University
College of Medicine in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. An ethicist and health policy
expert by training, he earned his MA and PhD from the University of California,
Irvine, and his MHHSA from Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota. His research
interests include (i) the
ethics of solid organ xenotransplantation, (ii) the ethics of dual use research
of concern, and (iii) the nature and significance of false hope in medicine.