USA Today published an inside look at how the FDA struggles to review claims made in drug ads.
It reports: "The FDA's drug-marketing enforcement office has only 40 employees to review more than 30,000 pieces of promotional material a year. Those include TV and print ads, sales brochures for doctors and company postings on Internet sites. And while the FDA has stepped up enforcement this year, citing 13 drug pitches for running afoul of marketing rules, the enforcement pace is well off historical levels. In 2000, the FDA cited 79."
Critics include Public Citizen's Sidney Wolfe, who "says the FDA has encouraged such conduct by handing down weak punishments that sought only to halt offending promotions and others like them. Sometimes the FDA did not act until the promotions had ceased."
"There's no disincentive to running misleading advertising," says Wolfe in the article. "Drugmakers know they'll be able to run ads for four, five months and get their message out. ... Then FDA says stop, and they stop and go on to something else that may be more misleading."