Reading the paper today I came across another one. An ad prodding me to ask my doctor if (some drug) may be right for me. Does anyone else find it bothersome that drugs–mind altering, body altering, prescription-only DRUGS–are being marketed directly to Joe Sixpack as a consumer commodity item? If you want to see some blood boil, ask your doctor about how many random patients have been in there that week asking about random prescription drugs they saw advertised on television, with scant or no information as to the drug’s actual purpose.
I really love it when the drug company is too busy trying to convince you that you need it to give any indication as to what the drug actually does. Some arbitrarily long time ago, I was watching TV and a drug commercial came on. It showed a guy sitting on a couch. All of the sudden the guy takes off running, and you see/hear…
ADVAIR. GO.
With such comprehensive information about this little pill, I’m currently operating under the assumption that it’s some kind of weapons-grade laxative.
A little while back a couple guys I knew in college, a communications major and his roommate, the PFY, had the semi-serious idea of marketing their own drug. The scene would open on a person or persons frolicking across a too-green grassy field set against a process blue sky, bouncy music playing in the background, dogs chasing butterflies, and so forth.
(In that canonically deep, too-soothing, ask-your-doctor-about voice) “Ask your doctor about PLACEBO. …”
More frolicking; saturated yellow dandelions; waving blades of grass
“…Side effects were minimal, and comparable to those of a sugar pill. …” (and yes, I have actually heard this line in a drug commercial. was it a diabetes drug?)
The goal would be to see how many of these brainwashed consumers would indeed talk to their doctors about the wonder drug Placebo (C12H22O11), and ultimately buy some when their doctors could stop stifling giggles long enough to write them out a prescription. Don’t know if the ad will ever happen, but its contribution to science alone (“yes, brainwashed, but HOW brainwashed?”), not to mention public policy, would be well worth it…
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