I like to flip through the channels while watching the evening news. The other night while practicing my thumbaerobics, I noticed that the exact same commercial was on two of the networks at the exact same time. That surprised me a bit. What didn't shock me was that it was an ad for a prescription drug.
I decided to start paying attention. I observed that half of the advertisements on the news are for pharmaceuticals. I also learned that I must have at least half a dozen things seriously wrong with me and should be heavily medicated. If I could just learn to ignore the fact that I feel fine I might have some hope for recovery.
No, seriously, we are being turned into a nation of neurotic hypochondriacs. From what I can tell those of us who watch the network news are really, really sick. We need lots of drugs for our blood pressure, Erectile Dysfunction, depression, Asthma, more Erectile Dysfunction, hair loss, blood clots, Alzheimer's, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, yet more Erectile Dysfunction, Fibromyalgia, Arthritis, bladder control, enlarged prostate, the dreaded Chronic Dry Eye, even more Erectile Dysfunction and worst of all... the single most horrible scourge of our modern lives... short eyelashes. Good thing some company spent years of research and testing to develop a cure for that!
I remember when Walter Cronkite and Huntley–Briskly didn't push drugs. I always thought it was because it was illegal, but it wasn't.
The pharmaceutical companies correctly believed that consumers shouldn't be making their own prescription decisions and the FDA required full disclosure of all of a drug's effects be included in any advertising. Print was the only viable medium for all of that information so advertisements were directed specifically toward doctors in professional journals and magazines.
In the '80s money began to flow from the drug manufacturers into the pockets of lobbyists. Strictly by coincidence (we all know that huge amounts of dough have absolutely no influence in these matters) the FDA relaxed the disclosure rules for ads. Whatever the FDA deemed as "serious" or "common" side effects still had to be disclosed in a broadcast advertisement. The details could be made available elsewhere.
Still, the ads sounded kind of bad with all of those nasty side effects included, so the drug makers needed a loophole. A little more moolah into the proper hands and viola, one was soon opened.
They're called "reminder ads" and the pharmaceuticals used them with a vengeance. These ads basically repeated the brand name over and over again. Simple name recognition. If the commercial never said what the drug was for, those pesky side effects need not be revealed. They were operating on the theory that people want what they see on TV even if they have absolutely no idea what it is. And it worked.
Once the names of the drugs were sufficiently beaten into our brains the companies felt comfortable revealing the vile consequences of consuming their products. We've been completely desensitized to the point that ads now routinely mention "possible death" as a side effect and yet about fifty million of us a year, according to a recent study, rush out to ask their doctors to give them these pills.
Obviously the pharmaceutical companies are no longer concerned about the public's aversion to horrible side effects. Anywhere from 15 to 30 seconds of a 60 second advertisement is a fast talking laundry list of the dismal things that might happen if we consume their products -- but consume we do. Even when the cure is worse than the disease, Americans seem convinced that they needed lots and lots of pills.
I'm no psychiatrist but I think an attitude of "it must be good if it's strong enough to kill me" has developed. I'm sure not wasting any of my hard earned money on a chronic dry eye potion that can't at least put me in a comma.
The end result of this? Americans are now by far the most medicated people on the planet. Half of us take a prescription drug everyday and once we hit 65 that number goes to five out of six. An average of eleven different prescriptions for every man, woman and child every year. Over 100,000 Americans die annually from prescription drugs, making them the nation's forth leading killer. That's more than double the number that die in car accidents.
Are the ads are behind this? Pharmaceutical manufacturers spend more on marketing than research.
"What the drug companies are doing now is promoting drugs for long-term use to essentially healthy people."
I didn't make that up, Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, said it five years ago. Gee, that was over a trillion dollars of drugs ago.
Over twice as many Americans take daily prescriptions now than 20 years ago, before the advertising craze began. How could we possibly need all of these drugs? Are we suddenly twice as sick as we were a couple decades ago? I don't think so.
Wait, maybe taking all of these pills made us twice as healthy. Not by a long shot. Chronic diseases are way up. All the better to sell more pills.
America is nearly alone in this insanity. New Zealand is the only other country on the planet that allows this direct-to-consumer advertising of drugs and they are in the process of stopping it. Why? Because it doesn't help with public health.
The real outcome has been to provide financial incentive to the pharmaceutical industry to market new drugs as remedies for all sorts of maladies, including ones they were never intended to treat. They are literally selling the side effects now... like growing eyelashes.
A while back I made up the dreaded Periodic Interrupted Sleep Syndrome (P.I.S.S.) in a sarcastic effort to point out the absurdity of this syndrome society that we have become. Now I seriously expect to see an ad for a new drug to treat it any day. I'll be flipping through the channels (which I've discovered means I have adult ADD and need immediate medication) and there it will be.
On two channels at once... right after a news story about a new drug.
David, GypsyNester.com
