Direct-to-consumer (DTC) pharmaceutical advertising challenges traditional medical ethics because it suggests that health care is a commercial enterprise, not a paternalistic endeavor of duty-bound professionals and enlightened regulators. Stalwart defenders of the old hierarchical physician-directed system will not succumb to the trend toward decentralization, which DTC advertising exemplifies, without putting up a fight.
Direct-to-Consumer Advertising and the Demise of the Ideal Model of Health Care
By Ronald F. White
This
article
appeared in
the Fall 2006 issue of The Independent Review.
Other Independent Review articles by Ronald F. White | |
Summer 2009 | The Modern Health Care Maze: Development and Effects of the Four-Party System |
Spring 2007 | Institutional Review Board Mission Creep: The Common Rule, Social Science, and the Nanny State |