"Search engines are often the first place people go when they have health questions," says Daniel Eisenkraft Klein, a research fellow at the Program on Regulation, Therapeutics and Law at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital. "Pharmaceutical companies have figured out how to game that system with pay-per-click ads, which are essentially their way of buying their way to the top of search results," he added."
"Normally, drug companies have to follow strict rules when it comes to advertising their products in magazines or television commercials. They have to do things like disclose risks or side effects of the drug, and they can't advertise a drug to treat a condition it hasn't been FDA-approved to treat, even if doctors may sometimes prescribe that drug "off label," to treat other conditions. If they do, the companies can get in trouble with the FDA."
Ozempic appears among top results for weight-loss searches through paid sponsored search ads despite FDA approval only for Type 2 diabetes. Pharmaceutical companies pay search engines pay-per-click fees to prioritize specific keywords and place branded pages high on results pages. Traditional drug advertising in print and television must disclose risks and cannot promote unapproved uses, but online sponsored search ads are not regulated to the same extent. The legal framework has not adapted to online advertising, creating a pathway for drug makers to reach consumers seeking weight-loss information. An analysis of two years of paid search results for Ozempic sponsored by its manufacturer found that a notable share of purchased keywords contained the word "weight."
Read at www.npr.org
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