Introduction In the given case, it highlights the issue on direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs. Right now, such advertising practice has been allowed in two developed countries like in the United States and the United Kingdom. Indeed, pharmaceutical companies find such advertising as the effective tool in maximizing their profits and creating demands. Basically, direct-to-consumer advertising for prescription drugs was usually done in various promotional materials and mediums. Thus, their main intention is to educate the patients and encourage them to be actively involved in taking care of their own health. Surprisingly, such advertisements terribly increased prescriptions from physicians. Apparently, most of their advertisements are deemed to be inaccurate containing claims prove to be misleading and not reliable.
Direct-to-Consumer Advertising of Prescription Drugs Generally, people have divided views on the issue of direct-to-consumer advertising of pharmaceutical drugs. For some people, they are directly opposing the idea of such advertising claiming that it has impact on the quality of healthcare. They believe that in the actual scenario, direct-to-consumer advertising often provides biased emotional appeals and unreliable educational materials. Most often, such advertising affects the consumer perceptions as well as the prescription of medications. In fact, recent study shows that such activity further increased patients’ request for specific drugs whereas the advertised drugs usually gained more prescriptions even without so much benefit in terms of health outcomes. Having this scenario, it seems that the greater public is now facing health tragedy. Thus, companies having direct-to-consumer advertisements are using more personalized and individualized approach. Their advertisements usually make biased appeals to the public and directly influencing the decision of consumers. As a result, their advertising activities often caused dramatic increase for adverse outcomes as many viewers are inappropriately influenced by some unreliable claims. Thus, such advertisements usually caused multifaceted interactions between the severity of the condition, prevalence of a particular health case, the frequency and severity of side effects, and the effectiveness of treatment. In evaluating whether the event of direct-to-consumer advertising of pharmaceutical drugs is ethical, it would be best to consider the categorical imperative of Immanuel Kant. The categorical imperative refers to the expression whereas the basis of ones action should be the universalizable action. Thus, an action can be considered as morally upright if the doer of an action could accept it if everyone will do it all the time (BBC, “Duty-Based Ethics”). Just like in the issue of direct-to-consumer advertising of pharmaceutical drugs, the companies behind this activity would surely not accept if they themselves will be supplied with unreliable information. Probably as of the moment, these pharmaceutical companies do not mind the possible consequences of direct-to-consumer advertising activities since they are receiving higher returns from these activities. However, they surely have different reaction if all the people around them would do the same thing. This basis corresponds to the fact that if people could only have a choice between living in a place where everyone told the truth and the other one where everyone lied, and then surely people will prefer the place with honesty. It shows that the first expression of Kant’s categorical imperative relates to the golden rule of treating others as you would like to be treated. In the second version of categorical imperative, it refers to the act on how one should treat humanity as an end and never as a means. Thus, the second version emphasizes the importance of giving respect to other people. Indeed, Kant’s theory is an example of duty based ethics; it judges morality by evaluating the nature of