New FDA rule for phar­ma ad­ver­tise­ments re­quires side ef­fects to be ex­plained clear­ly

Ever no­tice how the nar­ra­tor of a drug ad­ver­tise­ment on TV can breeze through the side ef­fects in a tone that’s easy to tune out? That’s chang­ing with new rules from the FDA re­leased Mon­day that es­tab­lish more ro­bust stan­dards to en­sure bet­ter clar­i­ty around a phar­ma’s ma­jor state­ment on the side ef­fects and risks of a drug in di­rect-to-con­sumer (DTC) TV and ra­dio ads.

This fi­nal rule comes in ad­di­tion to long­stand­ing re­quire­ments that com­pa­nies in­clude such risk in­for­ma­tion in pre­scrip­tion drug ads, but in this case, the FDA and Con­gress want­ed to more ef­fec­tive­ly con­vey those risks.

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