The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is proposing a very interesting loosening of their regulations of pharmaceutical company marketing. The pros and cons of the proposed changes present an interesting dilemma, with legitimate points on both sides.
When the FDA approves a drug it is approved for a very specific medical indication. I have long thought that FDA approved indications for drugs were too narrow and restricting. For example, most anti-seizure medications are initially approved not for seizures but only for certain types of seizures – for example for adjunctive therapy (meaning it is meant to be added to another drug rather than used alone) for focal onset seizures (and not against primary generalized seizures – or ones that begin all over the brain at once).
Once approved physicians are free to use drugs as they see fit. If evidence shows that a new seizure medication is effective as first line treatment, then it is ethical good medicine to use it that way, even if it is not FDA approved for that use (this is called off-label use). FDA approved is not equivalent to science-based.