 |
|
Direct-to-Consumer Advertising and Physician Prescribing
|
|
| Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings. |
|
|
|
To the Editor: In their study of the relationship between direct-to-consumer advertising and the prescribing practices of physicians, Dr Kravitz and colleagues1 conducted a randomized controlled trial using trained standardized patients (SPs). This design necessarily involved elaborate deception to produce unbiased data. The authors noted that "written informed consent for participation and audiorecording of visits was obtained from all participating physicians." However, whether their research adequately respected the autonomy of physician research participants by obtaining informed consent is open to question.
The article states that "physicians were told only that the study would involve seeing 2 SPs several months apart, that each SP would present with a combination of symptoms, and that the purpose of the study was ‘to assess social influences on practice and the competing demands of primary care.’" Although the participating physicians knew that they would be visited by stealth patients who would audiotape their conversations, thus . . . [Full Text of this Article]
Franklin G. Miller, PhD;
David Wendler, PhD
dwendler@nih.gov
Department of Clinical Bioethics
National Institutes of Health
Bethesda, Md
RELATED ARTICLES
Direct-to-Consumer Advertising and Physician Prescribing—Reply
Richard L. Kravitz, Peter Franks, Ronald M. Epstein, Mitchell D. Feldman, and Carol E. Franz
JAMA. 2005;294(6):678-679.
EXTRACT
| FULL TEXT
Influence of Patients’ Requests for Direct-to-Consumer Advertised Antidepressants: A Randomized Controlled Trial
Richard L. Kravitz, Ronald M. Epstein, Mitchell D. Feldman, Carol E. Franz, Rahman Azari, Michael S. Wilkes, Ladson Hinton, and Peter Franks
JAMA. 2005;293(16):1995-2002.
ABSTRACT
| FULL TEXT
|
