T h e S t o r y o f M e d i c a l A dvertising i n A m e r i c a Paul Starr, in his scholarly study The Social Transformation of American Medicine, describes the new standards: To have a drug accepted, a company had to comply with theAMA council's rules. Not only were drugs forbidden whose manufacturers made false advertising claims or refused to disclose their drug’s composition, the council also would not approve any drug that was directly advertised to the public or whose "label, package, or circular" listed the diseases for which the drug was used. Companies would have a choice of markets: If they washed to advertise a drug to doctors they could not advertise it to the public or instruct laymen in its use.1 The core qualities of advertising drugs—message, media, and audience—had been restructured to hobble the marketing of patent medicines (soon to he further restricted by the establishment of the Food and Drug Administration through the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which created regulatory authority in the field). This restructuring also enhanced the authority of physicians to control the more potent and more effective pharmaceutical armamentarium that was emerging from advances in biology and chemistry. Faced with the choice put to them by the AMA, which for many years issued a seal of approval on pharmaceuticals, companies like Lilly, Upjohn, Wyeth and Parke-Davis, chose the "ethical" route and, based on a decision on advertising policy, the character of the pharmaceutical industry as we know it today was established. The scientifically directed companies instructed their advertising agencies or internal ad departments to conform to the AMA standards and by so doing, these agencies and departments became the forerunners of the medical advertising specialization. 13
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