Helping Patients Assess the Benefits of their Drugs: Reading Inside the Box and Between the Lines on Drug Efficacy

Nothing creates advertising memes faster than DTC promotion – not even Super Bowl commercials – because health professionals and “civilians” alike take prurient interest in the conversation between pharmaceutical companies and patients. It’s not surprising, then, that Rx drug ads are both the inspiration for cultural jokes (can anyone look at a claw-foot bath tub without thinking of erectile dysfunction?) and the launch point for serious public health commentary.

Case in point. In a recent op-ed article in the NY Times, “Think inside the box,” authors, Steven Woloshin and Lisa M. Schwartz, two Dartmouth Medical School professors, urge use of patient Fact Boxes that feature not just drug side effects but also data on efficacy – which, in many cases, turn out to be less impressive than what optimistic patients imagine them to be. The presumption, which seems hard to refute, is that patients can make more educated choices about the risk-benefits of drugs when they know more – not just about the risks, but also about the benefits, or lack thereof.