Is a More Robust Regulatory Response Needed?
Box 1 summarizes the types of disease-mongering activities companies can use to stimulate drug sales, including those described above. The rationale for regulation of drug promotion is health protection, encouragement of appropriate medicine use, and prevention of deceptive advertising. The European community code on medicinal products for human use states that advertising of medicinal products “must encourage the rational use of the product and may not be misleading” [34]. Canada’s Food and Drugs Act prohibits advertising of a drug that is “false, misleading or deceptive or is likely to create an erroneous impression regarding its character, value, quantity, merit or safety” [35]. The World Health Organization’s Ethical Criteria for Medicinal Drug Promotion states that advertisements, “…should not take undue advantage of people’s concern for their health” [36]. Disease mongering by definition creates erroneous impressions of the condition a product aims to treat and the merit and safe
