The raison d'etre of this website is to provide you with hard scientific information which may help you make informed decisions in your quest for health (so far I have blogged concise summaries of over 1,500 scientific studies and have had three books published).

My research is mainly focused on the effects of cholesterol, saturated fat and statin drugs on health. If you know anyone who is worried about their cholesterol levels and heart disease, or has been told to take statin drugs you could send them a link to this website, and to my statin or cholesterol or heart disease books.

David Evans

Independent Health Researcher

Thursday 9 September 2010

Only 6% of drug advertising material sent to doctors is supported by evidence

Published in the BMJ 2004; 328 : 485 27 February 2004)

Only 6% of drug advertising material is supported by evidence
Annette Tuffs
Institute for Evidence-Based Medicine Heidelberg

This paper can be accessed at: http://www.bmj.com/content/328/7438/485.2.full
 
This study, about advertising material and marketing brochures sent out by drug companies to GPs in Germany, has shown that about 94% of the information in them has no basis in scientific evidence.
 
About 15% of the brochures did not contain any citations, while the citations listed in another 22% could not be found. In the remaining 63% the information was mostly correctly connected with the relevant research articles but did not reflect their results. Only 6% of the brochures contained statements that were scientifically supported by identifiable literature.
 
The authors warn that such a high amount of misinformation puts patients' health at risk.

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