Healthcare advertising between hippocratic ethos, law and competition

Abstract

Healthcare advertising is an area of particular interest to verify the balancing proposed in the national and EU law between these two complementary dimensions of the health profession which, by recalling different and sometimes opposing values, allow us to shed light on the dangers of policies and interpretations of law not able to put the human nature and the protection of human dignity before the economic reasons. The present contribution, inspired by the recent intervention of the legislator in the field of healthcare advertising, intends to analyze the regulation of advertising within the health professions both from an exquisitely deontological and legal point of view, focusing on the problem of the functionality of the limits provided by the professional organization with respect to the protection of fundamental human rights and their compatibility with the protection of competition.