It has been incorrectly assumed that physicians always act as adequate gatekeepers to prevent consumers from receiving inappropriate, or unnecessary, and even dangerous prescription drugs as a result of deceptive advertising. A growing body of research, accumulating since the early 1980s, indicates that some physicians base their prescribing decisions on drug company promotional materials rather than on clinically relevant scientific research. Physicians who are influenced by advertising may, in fact, prescribe inappropriate or dangerous drugs when there are more effective, safer alternatives available. Serious safety problems were known about these drugs before they were cleared for marketing and there were numerous treatment options available to both physicians and patients with drugs in the same classes as mibefradil and bromfenac that were equally or more effective, less expensive, and safer than these drugs. Nabumetone was first marketed in Ireland in 1985, and was launched in the U.S. in 1992.
Nabumetone is also much more expensive than generic naproxen.
SmithKline Beecham began running DTC print ads in Arthritis Today magazine, a publication of the Arthritis Foundation, in 1995. False and misleading advertising was used by SmithKline Beecham to promote nabumetone directly to physicians and consumers. We think not. In some cases, these PILs have been found to be dangerously misleading by omitting vital risk information or containing risk information that is out of date. Without the protection of objective drug information consumers are naked in the pharmaceutical marketplace, subject to the misleading influence of billions of dollars worth of slick advertising, that promotes new drugs, that may be less safe and effective and more expensive than older drugs or non-drug treatments.