26
Aug
2014
Medical Ad Bask
I want to write a post on how the regulations concerning disclosure of health risks for medical products are actually counterproductive, because the announcer on TV or radio ends up rushing through an absurd list of nightmare possibilities such that people no longer even listen.
Does anyone have any good examples of this? Like, do you remember a particularly funny ad where the warnings were incongruent with the product? (Or, failing that, we can always go for potty humor if the announcer warns of diarrhea.)
SNL’s Happy Fun Ball
“Abilify” is the mother of all secondary side effects. Abilify laughs in the face of Happy Fun Ball. Also, who isn’t totally creeped out by the animated embodiment of depression in the Abilify commercial?
Along this line?
http://www.drugwatch.com/ssri/suicide/
I know the ads exist as I remember hearing them say it.
And how about ads that advertise “minor side effects” and then it just ends up being a laundry list of side effects.(of course including diarrhea)
Not medical ads, but how about this:
http://www.hoover.org/research/when-government-cries-wolf
Dude, stay on topic or we will feed you to those sea lions that lurk off your Monterey navy school.
I don’t have a source for this (and never bothered to look) but one time when I told a doctor I was concerned about the side effects of a certain drug, they told me something like “You know, one of the listed side effects of Advil is Death!”
Not unlike narcotics dealers.
I know a guy who died from Advil. He did take like several per day for a few months and he died many years later from the end stage renal disease it caused, but still. . .
Chantix
You will quit smoking and then commit suicide!!!!
Not a case of government crying wolf but a funny anecdote along the same line….prior to the birth of my son, I was reading a pamphlet published by a private advocacy group on the topic of circumcision, which this group was vehemently against. Anyway, the risks and dangers were outlined in this one section. It went on to list several potential maladies that could result from circumcision in increasing severity and capped it off with a warning that death was a possibility. But rather stop than there, it went on to read – and I kid you not – that “even worse things can happen” (or something to that effect). Not sure what they had in mind that is worse than death, but I certainly had a difficult time taking anything else I read seriously after coming across that little gem.