This letter-to-the-editor was published by the Wall Street Journal and appeared in the October 2, 2025, print edition as ‘A Better Target for Prasad: Personal Injury Ads’.
Your editorial “Dr. Prasad, the FDA’s Grim Reaper” (Sept. 23) rightly notes that there are some regulators who “loathe drug makers more than they care about helping patients.” If they were committed to the latter, they would focus on advertisements from trial lawyers, not pharmaceutical companies.
The FDA’s Vinay Prasad says that “compelling and attention-grabbing visuals” and “frequent scene changes, compete for the viewers’ attention and make it difficult for the viewers to comprehend” a drug’s risk profile. But doctors can help weigh the value of a given product before prescribing it.
More dangerous is when misleading ads from personal-injury attorneys frighten patients into stopping critical medications. A 2019 FDA study linked such ads to 47 adverse events, including seven deaths, after patients discontinued blood thinners. Nearly all of those in the surveyed group stopped treatment without medical guidance. This jeopardizes lives and burdens our healthcare system. Americans deserve public-health officials focused on their well-being, not that of the personal-injury bar.
Lauren Sheets Jarrell
American Tort Reform Association
