Europe may open airwaves to drug firms

Europe is preparing to loosen the gags stopping drug firms from commmunicating with patients, fuelling controversy over whether the public will get impartial information on prescription medicines.

Manufacturers welcome new proposals to let them disseminate "non-promotional" information through television, radio and other outlets, since it could spur faster uptake of new drugs.

Companies have long campaigned against rules that restrict them from talking directly to consumers, despite a wealth of often unreliable information being available on the internet.

Critics, however, fear the plans mark the start of a slippery slope towards hard-sell advertising.

In fact, proposals this month from the European Commission make clear that US-style ads for prescription drugs such as Viagra won't be coming to prime-time European TV any time soon.

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising - permitted in the US and New Zealand - will remained banned, except in the case of over-the-counter or non-prescription medicine, where it is already allowed.

Still, activist group Consumers International believes the move marks a crucial breach in a barrier designed to ensure patients only get independent and impartial information.

"In the European Commission's eyes, there is a clear difference between giving information and companies advertising. We think this would be advertising in everything but name," said group campaigner Justin Macmullan.

Some doctors are also worried. An editorial in the British Medical Journal in September said the move would be "confusing", while encouraging early use of new drugs was risky, as shown by the withdrawal of Merck & Co's Vioxx arthritis drug in 2004 on safety grounds.

Drugmakers insist DTC is not their goal in Europe, in contrast to the US, where $4.2 billion was spent on such ads in 2005, up 330 per cent from 1996, according to a study last year in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The strategy reflects the different market structures on either side of the Atlantic, with the US being primarily market-driven, while government payers dominate in Europe.

"We do not advocate, nor do we ever expect to advocate, direct-to-consumer advertisements in the US style here in Europe," said Scott Ratzan, European head of government affairs for Johnson & Johnson.

But Mr Ratzan, who also chairs the European pharmaceutical association's committee on information to patients, strongly believes drug firms have a role to play in communication.

"We need to get people to make better decisions and treat disease early, when it is more cost-effective and you have a better health outcome," he said.

Drug firms would like Europe to adopt new medicines faster. Products launched in the last five years represent 27 per cent of the US drugs market but only 15 per cent in Britain and 21 per cent in Germany, according to industry data.

Disease awareness campaigns that publicise a condition rather than a cure are likely to be important in the future information landscape. They are already increasingly common in Britain, which, together with Sweden, has a more liberal regime than other European countries.