Advertisement of medical products involves marketing and promoting health products such as prescription drugs through television, radio, newspapers or the internet. Direct advertising of medical and pharmaceutical products is not allowed in most countries. However, this type of advertising is allowed in the United States and New Zealand (Francer et al., 2014). Direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of medical products has both positive and negative impacts. One advantage of marketing pharmaceutical products is that it increases awareness among patients about the available treatment options. For instance, it provides information about new drugs in the market and their associated side effects. Another advantage of these adverts is that they help in destigmatizing certain illnesses thus encouraging patients to seek medical assistance. Such patients become more inspired to be in charge of their medical care. Lastly, advertising also increases sales for pharmaceutical companies hence increasing their profits.
Equally, the negative side of medical products advertisement cannot be overlooked. First, some of the adverts can be misleading to consumers who lack the knowledge required to understand the impacts of using certain products. Secondly, although advertising increases the sales volumes, the cost incurred in marketing the products is disadvantageous to pharmaceutical companies. Another disadvantage is that some of the adverts encourage the purchase of drugs without a prescription from medical personnel. Patients may end up using drugs that are not appropriate for their ailments. Finally, advertising pharmaceutical products increases the medical expenses for patients since most of the advertised drugs are considerably expensive. Therefore, the government should restrict medical advertisements under certain conditions in an attempt to mitigate these negative impacts. Such conditions include if the advert is inappropriate or misleading to consumers and if the cost of the advertised products leads to consumer exploitation.
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References
Francer, J., Izquierdo, J. Z., Music, T., Narsai, K., Nikidis, C., Simmonds, H., & Woods, P. (2014). Ethical pharmaceutical promotion and communications worldwide: codes and regulations. Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine , 9 (1), 7.
