Because of donors like you, we’re able to take bold legal action. Join us in continuing the fight—donate here.
ICAN’s legal team has sent a letter to FDA, urging it to amend its rules in order to force drug manufacturers to fully disclose risks in television and online advertisements.
Many people may not be aware that America is one of the only countries in the world that allows direct-to-consumer marketing for pharma products. Not only is it allowed, but it floods all media: television, radio, print media, social media, everywhere the eye can see.
Prior to 1999, direct-to-consumer radio and television ads for drugs were rare. That kind of advertising is paid for by the second, and so the time it took to fully disclose the risks of taking a particular drug made ads too long, and therefore too expensive, to run. But in 1999, FDA gave Big Pharma a gift and issued guidance that allowed manufacturers to shift the bulk of the risk disclosure to sources outside the ad (by providing a telephone number, website address, etc., where people could get more information).
This change in guidance had two major impacts: first, it led to a massive surge in television drug advertisements—pharmaceutical companies spent over $6 billion on TV advertising in 2024 alone. (We’ll let you decide how those advertising dollars influence the media’s coverage of products like vaccines.) Second, it increased the number of people asking their doctors for prescriptions of the “safe and effective” drugs they had seen advertised on TV—sound familiar?
Recently ICAN’s legal team wrote a letter to FDA, urging the agency to stop allowing pharma to bombard people with ads that hide the risks of the drugs and vaccines being promoted. FDA has the power to do so by amending the regulation that governs risk disclosure in broadcast advertising. We also proposed that FDA modernize the rule’s language to clarify how the rules apply to vaccines, medical devices, and ads on the internet and in social media.
It’s time FDA stops bowing down to pharma and starts protecting you by ensuring that the risks of every medical product are fully disclosed.
To support future legal actions like this, click here to donate.
