FDA to Ask Medical Community About Effects of Pharma Marketing
The Food and Drug Administration is about to ask the nation’s medical community a question: How influential is pharmaceutical marketing from physicians’ standpoints? 
Pharmaceutical companies spend billions a year to promote their products.
But the FDA wants to know if marketing is getting in the way of physicians’ work.
“Pharma has every right to market their products to doctors,” says Todd Williamson, M.D.
Williamson is an Atlanta neurologist and past president of the Medical Association of Georgia. He says pharmaceutical reps can act as conduits of important information, and that it should be up to doctors to decide how much access those reps have to their practices.
But when it comes to direct-to-consumer marketing, like TV commercials, Williamson is squarely opposed.
“The decision to use a medication has to be taken in the context of many factors, and patients don’t have the knowledge base to do that in every case,” says Dr. Williamson.
The FDA’s survey will take about two years to complete, at an estimated cost up to $365,000.
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