By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
JUNE 11, 2024 | One particular form of television just plain annoys me.
No, it’s not the poor quality of the television offerings or the sorry multiplicity of possible programs, with none of them exceptionally good. And it’s not the local television news seeming to merely chase ambulances and not offer any stories of real substance. (Substantial stories cost more, where pictures of “where the accident was,” with the reporter pointing, is cheaper to put on the air.)
What bugs me is the advertisements for different pharmaceutical remedies that bombard us.
Such commercials really annoy me.
People in nearly all other countries don’t have this annoying bother. Broadcast television doesn’t allow it in most countries. The only other nation that allows direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising is New Zealand. Why New Zealand and the United States are the only nations to allow the drug makers to hawk their so-called remedies at us is absurd.
In effect, it suggests to us viewers that we should “self-medicate” ourselves. Yep, they suggest that if you have these particular symptoms, you should take their remedy. First, you will have to ask your doctor to prescribe this wonder drug for yourself so you can be healthy again.
Fat chance.
What are we talking about? You have heard the names of these new medications, such as Wayraqra, or Xeniback, Farlbrioza, and Travabca. (None of these are real, I think. I just made them up). Do you realize that most of these drugs that they push on television consist of three syllables? I bet some study showed the drug makers that most of us can remember a three syllable name better. And the new names are hard to pronounce and use many of the lesser-used letters of the alphabet to find themselves a new drug name. So you see a lot of V, Q, Z and Y letters in their names. Yep, somebody got paid for coming up with that new zany-named drug.
Yes, we know that drug companies come up with many wonderful products that really do work. Every day I take several medications that control my diabetes, lowers my blood pressures, and keeps me alive in a healthy state. These drugs can do wonders. But the doctor, in his wisdom, prescribed them. I didn’t self-medicate by asking for them.
Yet direct-to-consumer advertising will make you think that maybe this new drug can stop your leg from hurting, or halt the cancer you might be diagnosed with, or clean out your arteries. So you are pressured into asking your doctor to prescribe it for you, since it could work, if you have this ailment. Right?
Then the question arises: how much cheaper would our medications be if the drug companies stopped spending these millions and millions of dollars on advertising? Yes, we understand that they must get a financial return for all the research they do. But if what they invent in the lab is good, doctors will find out, and we will get these miracle drugs without the pharma companies throwing money with advertisements on television, in magazines, and on the internet.
Another concern: is it ethical for these companies to profit on us by promoting their drugs in such a manner? Wouldn’t pure science get the word out pretty quickly on significant developments in new drug therapies?
And how can those promoting drug-to-consumer advertising even sleep well at night when all these promotions are excessively costly, overwrought and out of control in many ways?
Curtailing the advertising of these pharmaceuticals ought to be a subject for serious consideration….and eventual elimination.
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