Does Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Advertising Achieve a Mechanistic Fair Balance? A Critical Review of the Literature and Debate

The pharmaceutical industry is one of the most advertising-intensive industries.With the exponential growth of Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Advertising(DTCA),there have been a large number of attempts to investigate the effectiveness of DTCA in various media,medications,and consumer groups.However,little attention has been paid to the history of the US Food and Drug Administration(FDA)regulations of DTCA and the status of DTCA practices in terms of regulatory compliance.Thus,this current study identifies a research gap in DTCA and highlights a new avenue that can be explored in future research.