Somebody else made the stock photo above
Lesson No. 1 Learned From My First Year Without Cable Television: The next President of the United States needs to do something revolutionary about the plague of prescription drug companies killing our country’s healthcare system.
I now get my TV news the old-fashioned way: a half-hour show broadcasted over the airwaves via one of the Big 3 networks and captured by my rabbit ears. I choose Brian Williams and NBC as my main delivery system and you’d be surprised how much valuable information the gargantuan-headed anchor can provide during an old-fashioned, 30-minute newscast. And without a bunch of other channels to surf, you get to enjoy a lot of commercials. Recently, really I guess over the last five years or so, like all of us I’ve been struck by the ungodly number of ads for prescription drugs during these newscasts.
I now get my TV news the old-fashioned way: a half-hour show broadcasted over the airwaves via one of the Big 3 networks and captured by my rabbit ears. I choose Brian Williams and NBC as my main delivery system and you’d be surprised how much valuable information the gargantuan-headed anchor can provide during an old-fashioned, 30-minute newscast. And without a bunch of other channels to surf, you get to enjoy a lot of commercials. Recently, really I guess over the last five years or so, like all of us I’ve been struck by the ungodly number of ads for prescription drugs during these newscasts.
A recent academic study showed that average TV-watching Americans see 30 hours worth of prescription drug ads every year. That’s 3,600 30-second ads chock full of rock-climbing, beach-combing, bath-taking, bathroom-seeking, sink-exploding seniors and sleepy-headed beavers and butterflies.
A recent non-academic study by me found that while all three network news programs were on commercial break, two were showing advertisements for prescriptions drugs. The third had an ad for the over-the-counter gas conservation product Beano, followed immediately by a commercial for Pfizer’s Detrol LA, the drug for the industry-created disease known as “Overactive Bladder,” or what we used to call “Having to Go to the Bathroom.” If you think you’re immune to the power of this kind of saturation (I’m talking about advertising now, not accidents), then I’ll personally pick up your prescription for crazy pills at one of the thousands of new 24-hour drug stores popping up on every street corner.
This country has gone prescription crazy. Do yourself a favor by turning off the TV and read New York Times reporter Melody Petersen’s new book, “Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs.”
I don’t think it’s any secret that drug companies are powerful and filled with something less than benevolent business people searching for cures to our great diseases, but Petersen’s book does a remarkable job of putting all of the individual pieces together to create the big, scary picture of an industry gone wild.
For instance, did you know:
*The United States and New Zealand are the only countries on earth that allow drug companies to market directly to consumers? New Zealand did give us the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, but something tells me we might not be on the right side of history on this.
*Our country is the only developed country on earth that does not control prescription drug prices for its citizens? Price control is obviously for dirty socialists.
*Between 1998 and 2004, pharmaceutical companies spent more on lobbying our government than any other industry? The oil companies already have everything they need.
*Americans spent more on prescription drugs in 2004 than we did on fast food or gasoline? Truth be told, there was no McRib that year and gas was still about $2 a gallon.
*Drugs need only to work slightly better than a sugar pill in just one study to be labeled “effective”? I still take Jolly Ranchers when my Irritible Bowel Syndrome flares up.
In her book, Petersen argues that drug companies have all but quit trying to find drugs that will help treat real diseases because not enough people are afflicted. Instead, they’re concentrating on marketing pills with mass-market appeal. There isn’t a consumer in America who doesn’t want to be able to eat fatty foods, be happy, have sex and sleep well. And now we also want our children to behave with very little parenting, so we get them diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder and start them on their regimen of prescriptions. It’s all great business for the pharmaceutical industry, but potentially disasterous for our bodies and brains.
For the record, I took Detrol LA’s online quiz to see if I, too, might have an overactive bladder. I answered truthfully that there have been times when I really had to go to the bathroom, sometimes in the middle of the night, and I was bothered to have to disturb my sleep with a trip to the bathroom. We didn’t even cover roadtrips or movie theaters, but because I scored higher than 8 (I scored 9 out of a possible 40), it said I “may have overactive bladder,” or OAB. The company’s website then told me how I should talk to the doctor about my “condition.”
“Your doctor can test your blood pressure or cholesterol. But OAB is different,” it says. “Your doctor has no way of knowing how much your OAB bothers you. You need to bring it up.”
What it doesn’t tell you to bring up is that one of the known side effects is hallucinations, which has led some poor old ladies taking Detrol to get diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
That’s scary, but the most frightening thing to me is how our nation’s physicans – your doctors and mine – have been seduced by the drug companies’ big pockets and bribe money to the point that it’s affecting paitent care. How many times have you seen one of the drug companies’ ground soldiers (in 2004 there were 101,000 of them deployed), also known as pharmaceutical sales reps, visiting the gang at your doctor’s office. Ever notice all the pens, calendars, tissue box holders, etc. littering that office? Unfortunately, the effort to court your doctor doesn’t stop with trinkets. There’s a wealth of cash payments, vacations and other perks offered for “high prescribers.”
While job hunting recently, I saw this ad to join Alaven Pharmaceutical, which along with its roster of prescription drugs, is the maker of Balneol, a nonprescription perianal cleansing lotion.
Here’s what they’re looking for in an employee, “You will be exposed to a unique sales modes that is intended to reward those who on their own can move providers to write prescriptions and create sales.”
A recent non-academic study by me found that while all three network news programs were on commercial break, two were showing advertisements for prescriptions drugs. The third had an ad for the over-the-counter gas conservation product Beano, followed immediately by a commercial for Pfizer’s Detrol LA, the drug for the industry-created disease known as “Overactive Bladder,” or what we used to call “Having to Go to the Bathroom.” If you think you’re immune to the power of this kind of saturation (I’m talking about advertising now, not accidents), then I’ll personally pick up your prescription for crazy pills at one of the thousands of new 24-hour drug stores popping up on every street corner.
This country has gone prescription crazy. Do yourself a favor by turning off the TV and read New York Times reporter Melody Petersen’s new book, “Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs.”I don’t think it’s any secret that drug companies are powerful and filled with something less than benevolent business people searching for cures to our great diseases, but Petersen’s book does a remarkable job of putting all of the individual pieces together to create the big, scary picture of an industry gone wild.
For instance, did you know:
*The United States and New Zealand are the only countries on earth that allow drug companies to market directly to consumers? New Zealand did give us the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, but something tells me we might not be on the right side of history on this.
*Our country is the only developed country on earth that does not control prescription drug prices for its citizens? Price control is obviously for dirty socialists.
*Between 1998 and 2004, pharmaceutical companies spent more on lobbying our government than any other industry? The oil companies already have everything they need.
*Americans spent more on prescription drugs in 2004 than we did on fast food or gasoline? Truth be told, there was no McRib that year and gas was still about $2 a gallon.
*Drugs need only to work slightly better than a sugar pill in just one study to be labeled “effective”? I still take Jolly Ranchers when my Irritible Bowel Syndrome flares up.
In her book, Petersen argues that drug companies have all but quit trying to find drugs that will help treat real diseases because not enough people are afflicted. Instead, they’re concentrating on marketing pills with mass-market appeal. There isn’t a consumer in America who doesn’t want to be able to eat fatty foods, be happy, have sex and sleep well. And now we also want our children to behave with very little parenting, so we get them diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder and start them on their regimen of prescriptions. It’s all great business for the pharmaceutical industry, but potentially disasterous for our bodies and brains.
For the record, I took Detrol LA’s online quiz to see if I, too, might have an overactive bladder. I answered truthfully that there have been times when I really had to go to the bathroom, sometimes in the middle of the night, and I was bothered to have to disturb my sleep with a trip to the bathroom. We didn’t even cover roadtrips or movie theaters, but because I scored higher than 8 (I scored 9 out of a possible 40), it said I “may have overactive bladder,” or OAB. The company’s website then told me how I should talk to the doctor about my “condition.”“Your doctor can test your blood pressure or cholesterol. But OAB is different,” it says. “Your doctor has no way of knowing how much your OAB bothers you. You need to bring it up.”
What it doesn’t tell you to bring up is that one of the known side effects is hallucinations, which has led some poor old ladies taking Detrol to get diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
That’s scary, but the most frightening thing to me is how our nation’s physicans – your doctors and mine – have been seduced by the drug companies’ big pockets and bribe money to the point that it’s affecting paitent care. How many times have you seen one of the drug companies’ ground soldiers (in 2004 there were 101,000 of them deployed), also known as pharmaceutical sales reps, visiting the gang at your doctor’s office. Ever notice all the pens, calendars, tissue box holders, etc. littering that office? Unfortunately, the effort to court your doctor doesn’t stop with trinkets. There’s a wealth of cash payments, vacations and other perks offered for “high prescribers.”
While job hunting recently, I saw this ad to join Alaven Pharmaceutical, which along with its roster of prescription drugs, is the maker of Balneol, a nonprescription perianal cleansing lotion.
Here’s what they’re looking for in an employee, “You will be exposed to a unique sales modes that is intended to reward those who on their own can move providers to write prescriptions and create sales.”
Translation: You get rewarded for influencing doctors.
I'd feel more comfortable selling vacuum cleaners.
It really is just a business and it's their job to boost revenue, but when it comes to the public’s health, our government needs to step in and protect us.
It really is just a business and it's their job to boost revenue, but when it comes to the public’s health, our government needs to step in and protect us.
3 comments:
In my opinion: Just like there should be a separation of church and state, so should there be a split between marketing and medicine. These things won't happen, of course, because we (collectively) love our money... we friggin' LOVE it. On an individual level, as long as you rip those hard-wired blinders off and actually see these ads for what they are, it makes more and more sense to turn off the TV and flip on NPR. On a side note, what's with the duo in separate bathtubs for that "can't get it up" med?
I think "24-hour drug stores pooping up on every street corner" would have been equally effective.
Thanks for writing this.
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