Advertising Allies Turn Tide for Pharma

As seen in the WSJ Health Blog

A provision to empower FDA to yank consumer drug ads was stripped from the final version of an FDA bill, which was passed yesterday.

But it wasn’t Big Pharma that carried the day on the revision; it was the Gucci-loafered lobbyists for media and advertising firms.

[...]

Some in the advertising industry were concerned that giving FDA broad powers to block ads would lead to other government ad restrictions. “People just looked and they were incredulous,” says Harry Sweeney, chairman of Dorland Global Corp., a health marketing and communications firm that is a unit of Huntsworth PLC. “You’re getting into a very slippery-slope area.”

But of course, they were really just protecting their profits all along.