The pharmaceutical industry, quite aware of the love-hate relationship most average folks have with their products — and the incessant advertising that goes along with them — is continuing to “dial back’’ its intense pressure, and presence, in our lives and in our doctors’ offices.

Earlier this month, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) Board of Directors announced that it had adopted measures to strengthen its guiding principles on “Direct to Consumer’’ advertisements about prescription medicines.

The principle, according to PhRMA’s Web site, originally went into effect in January 2006, and “provide guidance to pharmaceutical research and biotechnology companies on ways to ensure that DTC communications provide accurate, accessible and useful information to patients and consumers.’’

New ones take effect March 2 and include the following “enhancements’’:

• A new principle states that DTC product advertisements featuring actors in the roles of health-care professionals should identify that actors are being used. If actual health-care professionals are featured and are compensated for their appearance, the advertisement should acknowledge the compensation.


• An added principle provides that DTC television or print advertisements featuring a celebrity endorser should accurately reflect the opinions, findings, beliefs or experience of the endorser. Companies should maintain verification of the basis of any actual or implied endorsement, including whether the endorser is, or has been, a user of the product.


• Language strengthening guidance related to the content and placement of DTC advertisements with adult-oriented content has been strengthened. The new version states that DTC television or print advertisements “containing content that may be inappropriate for children” should be placed in programs or publications “reasonably expected to draw an audience of approximately 90 percent adults (18 years or older).”


• For more information, visit www.phrma.org/principles_and_guidelines/

And consider that there will be more clarity on which “real” doctors — and which “real’’ actors and celebrities — are backing certain prescription drugs. It’s a real problem. A world-renowned Harvard child psychiatrist, and at times controversial researcher, recently agreed to curtail activities financed by the drug industry while Massachusetts General Hospital, where he was doing clinical trials, investigates his failure  to disclose consulting fees that he received from pharmaceutical companies supplying some of the drugs being used. A congressional investigation this year found that Dr. Joseph Biederman had been paid at least $1.6 million in consulting fees by drug companies from 2006 to 2007, but had failed to report the income to Harvard officials for several years, The New York Times reported today.

The Times also had an entertaining story today on Page One on how starting tomorrow, the pharmaceutical industry has agreed to a “voluntary moratorium’’ on branded goodies — T-shirts, pens, clocks and the like — that clutter almost every doctor’s office and hospital. Many medical workers interviewed said it was about time; a few others sniffed that such branding and giveaways had virtually nothing to do with the prescriptions that physicians write.

Maybe. But those branded covers for the metal stirrups you have to put your feet into while visiting the gynecologist’s office sure are distracting.