Drug advertisments

Last updated: 14 February 2007

What is drug promotion?
Why is this marketing unethical?
Who regulates drug promotion?
Self-regulation is failing
The health risks
Drug advertisements
Member action

Unethical drug advertisment samples

GSK, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche, Wyeth  

In 2006, CI commissioned a background report on issues of unethical drug promotion taking place in developing countries. The report was compiled by leading experts in the field of unethical drug promotion - Dr. Peter Mansfield of Healthy Skepticism, Dr. Maneerat Layton and Ms. Joana Ramos.

As part of their research, the authors uncovered a number of examples of unethical drug promotion in Asia and Latin America. In addition, CI's Africa office was able to provide examples from Ghana. A few of these examples are included here, and are an indication of the vast scope and impact of unethical drug promotion by the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies.

All the information presented in this section is accurate to August 2006.

Seen an unethical ad? Email it to pharma@consint.org. We'll check it out and may feature it in our future campaign work.

Glossary of terms and phrases