Diabetic Bread, Goat’s Milk Formula, Soda, Suntan Lamps, and Cigarettes
Peer-reviewed medical journals are those that publish original research articles and commentaries by physicians and other health professionals only after careful review by other experts who make recommendations to the editor about the validity and significance of the articles’ findings and conclusions. The journals whose articles are the most cited by researchers and practicing physicians alike are those with the strongest peer-review process. One of the foremost of these is the Journal of the American Medical Association, or JAMA, which accepts just 11% of the more than 7,000 major manuscripts it receives annually and 4% of the more than 4,400 research papers received. But the paid advertisements for medications and medical devices in JAMA and other journals directed at prescribing physicians do not undergo the same peer review. The pharmaceutical companies must adhere to guidelines set by the Food and Drug Administration, but the advertiser generally has carte blanche when it comes to the images and slogans used in the ads. This has led to the emergence of adverse reactions not previously identified in the testing of the drugs on a small number of individuals. For example, overenthusiasm in prescribing newly introduced antibiotics in the 1960s and 1970s led to the emergence of resistant strains of bacteria in ensuing decades.
In addition to ads for drugs and medical devices now no longer used and many long forgotten, in the first half of the 20 th century JAMA also accepted advertisements for numerous consumer products, including infant formulas, sanitariums, vitamins, automobiles, cigarettes, alcohol, hotels, airlines, soda, and milk. This project will explore examples of these advertisements in JAMA, as gleaned by Dr. Blum from dozens of issues of JAMA from the 1900s to the 1950s that he acquired. Such issues of medical journals are rare because when libraries bound them, the advertisements were discarded. Examples of each of the many categories of advertisements will be selected and included in a new online exhibition of the University of Alabama Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society (csts.ua.edu). Modern-day experts in the fields of nutrition and the medical specialties will be invited to comment on these bygone ads. For instance, a pediatrician will be invited to comment on ads for goat’s milk infant formulas; a nutritionist will be invited to discuss medical journal ads for Coca Cola and the Sugar Research Foundation; and a gynecologist will be asked to comment on an advertisement for diethylstilbestrol, which was found to cause harm to the children of mothers who took it during pregnancy to prevent miscarriages. As part of the project, a research poster and presentation will also be completed.
