If you’re spending even a couple of hours a day with the boob tube, you’re probably exposed to at least a dozen or more ads pushing drugs. Yes, the pharmaceutical industry spends billions of dollars each year on slick commercials that tell us how their drugs can make us feel healthier, younger, and more pain-free than ever before. In addition, their online marketing is in our faces every time we click on to the internet. We see videos of people frolicking in the park, exercising in the gym, or tripping the light fantastic on the dance floor as the narrator tells us that their physical jubilation is the result of the drug they’re taking, which has relieved whatever held them back prior to swallowing that magic elixir in pill form.
However, while we’re being distracted by the lights, the music, and the exultation of the drug-taker, a small-print disclaimer appears at the bottom of the screen for less time than it takes to read. That minor requirement by the FDA lists a litany of possible serious health risks, which, if they provided more time for people to read, would undoubtedly throw a scare into the most daring pill-poppers on the planet. Although the actor on the screen is smiling gleefully and doing cartwheels, the tiny font size below speaks of heart attack and stroke, diabetes complications, swelling of the joints, difficulty breathing, skin rashes, suicidal thoughts, nausea, diarrhea, and many more.
Believe it or not, that dizzying list of complications often includes the risk of death. I can’t imagine why anyone would put anything into his body that has so many serious health hazards. One Big Pharma rep stated that those drugs will not “cause” those side-effects; they only “may” cause them — and that, according to the rep, is a major nuance. Seems to me that it’s the same nuance as putting one round in a 6-cylinder revolver, spinning the cylinder, and pointing it at one’s head. Pulling the trigger will not cause the gun to fire, it only may fire.
During Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s confirmation process for secretary of Health and Human Services, New York senator Chuck Schumer said one of the reasons the nominee was unqualified is that he had no experience working in the pharmaceutical industry. After he was confirmed, Kennedy responded to Schumer’s comment on The Laura Ingraham Show, saying that these were the “very qualifications that got us to where we are today.” He noted that although having “4.2% of the world’s population,” the United States buys “70% of the pharmaceutical drugs on Earth. We spend two to three times what other countries pay for health care, and we have worse health outcomes. We literally have the sickest population in the world.”
Not only is Kennedy correct, but, of the roughly 200 countries in the world, only the U.S. and New Zealand allow prescription drugs to be advertised on television. Before 1997, if you wanted to advertise a prescription drug, you had to list every potential side-effect that appears on the drug’s label. That’s no longer an FDA protection for the consumer. Moreover, in most cases, federal law does not allow the FDA to require drug companies to submit ads for approval before they are used. That means that the FDA sees most of the ads at the same time as the public sees them. That doesn’t seem to provide much protection for the average American.
Secretary Kennedy should make it a priority to end the barrage of misleading and harmful prescription drug ads that insinuate themselves into the consciousness of hundreds of millions of Americans. He did a good job of pointing out the hypocrisy of those Democrat senators who were grilling him during the confirmation process, even though they are major recipients of drug money. Furthermore, he should publicly expose all those elected officials that have been receiving millions of dollars in donations from drug companies, which seem to be paying for protection from scrutiny. As for the FDA, if they’ve also been bought by Big Pharma, we need a complete overhaul of that agency.
Image via Pixnio.