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According to a new research report that appeared in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), doctors are now being paid to endorse pharmaceuticals on social media as “medical influencers.” Even worse, some of these doctors are getting paid big bucks, even when they don’t have any particular expertise with a specific pharmaceutical product. That’s just plain dangerous.
Drug endorsements from doctors
Imagine scrolling through your favorite social media feed, when you suddenly come across a post from a well-known doctor you’ve seen on TV. (Or, at least, one who has a degree from a prestigious medical school). He or she seems to know what they’re talking about, and you tend to trust whatever they say. If they’re pitching a particular pharmaceutical, it must be backed by years of clinical research, right?
Wrong. And that’s the problem. Doctors may be pitching drugs that are still clinically unproven. That could help to explain why pharmaceutical companies are looking for other ways to make them attractive to potential users.
Needless to say, the idea of using doctors as influencers is deeply troubling. These doctors have a clear conflict of interest, and they’re not making any effort to disclose it. In some cases, they are pocketing huge amounts of money, without any regard for what the medical consequences might be later on down the road. As the JAMA article pointed out, in many cases, the doctors simply did not have the scientific expertise to determine whether a specific drug was worth using or not.
This is apparently big business. According to the JAMA article, physicians received nearly $2.5 billion from industry in 2022. Of course, not all of this was for social media posts. Only a tiny portion was used for influencer outreach. But the point is the following: the pharmaceutical industry has made it very lucrative for doctors to recommend different drugs. In some cases, it means research grants. In other cases, it means money for clinical trials. And in still other cases, it involves “marketing efforts without scientific benefits.” Yikes! In layman’s terms, that can be translated as “advice to use a particular drug without any knowledge whether it works or not.”
Is the influencer model broken?
This leads me to think that the social media influencer model is broken. By now, you’ve probably tired of your favorite social media personalities constantly pitching new products to you. Or the endless “ad reads” that appear during a podcast or YouTube show. Or the insane focus from influencers on grabbing “merch” or “perks” from sponsors, advertisers, and other interested parties. It makes you wonder if anything is real on social media these days.
That’s scary, of course, if it means we’re starting to lose trust in our doctors, the same way that we’ve already lost trust in our politicians and our news organizations. Everyone these days, it seems, is taking money under the table to have a specific view or spout a particular narrative. If we lose trust in our doctors, then something very important will have been lost, and that’s a big shame.
