Americans Have Few Concerns About How Pharmaceutical Companies Market To Doctors.

The results of the latest Wall Street Journal Online/Harris Interactive Health-Care Poll, conducted this month, showed that a clear majority (67%) of adult Americans trust their doctors to choose the best drugs for them, despite the influence that drug marketers may have on their decision-making. Some key findings of the poll, which measured the public’s opinion toward pharmaceutical companies’ marketing of drugs to physicians, are:

* A quarter (23%) of those surveyed said their doctor may be too influenced by the pharmaceutical companies’ marketing efforts, while 67% trust their doctors to decide on the best drugs to use.

* One-fourth (25%) said that they think pharmaceutical companies are much too aggressive and 30% said they are a little too aggressive in their marketing of drugs to doctors. Another quarter (26%) of respondents feel drug marketing by pharmaceutical companies is acceptable and reasonable.

* Sixty-four percent (64%) of respondents feel that doctors should decide for themselves whether or not to meet with pharmaceutical companies to learn of the benefits of their drugs. Twenty-one percent (21%) prefer their doctors to meet with them, and 8% prefer their doctors not meet with drug marketers.

When asked if pharmaceutical companies should be allowed to sponsor continuing education programs that are designed to help them describe the benefits of their drugs, almost three-quarters (72%) said that they should be allowed to do this. Only 11% said they should not be allowed, and 18% were not sure.

“In general, patients think that their doctors make good judgments about when to believe or not to believe the drug companies,” says Humphrey Taylor, chairman of The Harris Poll(R), Harris Interactive. “The public does not believe that their doctors are manipulated by the pharmaceutical industry marketing.”

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