The Inverse Benefit Law: How Drug Marketing Undermines Patient Safety and Public Health

Der Artikel, dessen Schwerpunkt die Ursachen irrationaler Verschreibung ist, weist besonders auf die Rolle von Interessenkonflikten bei der Erstellung von Leitlinien und deren Folgen hin.

Recent highly publicized withdrawals of drugs from the market because of safety concerns raise the question of whether these events are random failures or part of a recurring pattern.
The inverse benefit law, inspired by Hart’s inverse care law, states that the ratio of benefits to harms among patients taking new drugs tends to vary inversely with how extensively the drugs are marketed. The law is manifested through 6 basic marketing strategies: reducing thresholds for diagnosing disease, relying on surrogate endpoints, exaggerating safety claims, exaggerating efficacy claims, creating new diseases, and encouraging unapproved uses.

Howard Brody, MD, PhD, and Donald W. Light, PhD
The Inverse Benefit Law: How Drug Marketing Undermines Patient Safety and Public Health
Am J Public Health 2011
http://ajph.aphapublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/101/3/399