Pushing Drugs · Jan 5, 04:07 PM
Drug commercials. You can’t escape them in the US. They play 24/7. They feature 30 seconds of someone beautiful and scantily clad in soft focus running free through a field of daisies or something similar. All the bliss in this picture was supplied, of course, by an incredibly expensive but colorful commercial pill. The implication is that the common folk should badger their doctor for some of this really cool, new drug, because all of us would rather tiptoe through the daisies than spend another day at the office with the asshole of a boss who’s not taking the right mind altering drugs himself.
In any case, this contrived bliss playing on our tellies is usually followed by equal time for the incredible lists of side effects the drug causes. “May cause dry mouth,” a patiently droning voice starts out, “Do not take while pregnant.” So far so good—at least for non-breeding men. Then it starts getting bizarre, “Nursing women should not touch a pill, or try to remove the child-proof top on full-moon nights. Men over 40 may experience problems related to their penises falling off in the night if they sleep on their stomachs, but this is an uncommon side effect. Do not operate machinery, including ink pens and model trains, while taking our wonderful elixir. Unborn children may experience discomfort, and may, in rare cases be born with multiple heads. This is easily remedied by qualified surgeons…”
How did we come to allow crap like this on our televisions? Can’t doctors be trusted to know our medical history and prescribe the best remedy? Who’s marketing to them?
Well, it turns out that drug companies spend a shitload of money bringing this crap to you. In The Cost of Pushing Pills: A New Estimate of Pharmaceutical Promotion Expenditures in the United States Marc-André Gagnon and Joel Lexchin come to this conclusion:
From this new estimate, it appears that pharmaceutical companies spend almost twice as much on promotion as they do on R&D. These numbers clearly show how promotion predominates over R&D in the pharmaceutical industry, contrary to the industry’s claim.
Holy crap. Imagine if the government did its job and forbid the industry to advertise like this. Imagine the money big pharma could put into R&D. Maybe we’d be healthier.
We’d be watching more savory TV, that’s for sure.
— Guido Veloce
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