House committee schedules DTC hearing
Executive Summary
The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations has scheduled a May 8 hearing on direct-to-consumer advertising of drugs. The committee has not yet released a witness list, but the hearing agenda likely is to include discussion on Merck and Schering-Plough's failure to release ENHANCE trial data while running DTC ads for Vytorin (1"The Pink Sheet," Jan. 21, 2008, p. 10). The practice of using celebrities and doctors to endorse drugs in advertising, such as the appearance of artificial-heart inventor Robert Jarvik in ads for Lipitor, will likely also come up (2"The Pink Sheet," Jan. 14, 2008, In Brief)