Posts Tagged ‘tv drug ads’

Bill Maher understands the woo factor in medicine, and has proved it time and time again. From interviews on Larry King, to political satire, he has shown an understanding of the underpinnings of the legal drug culture.

I have seen the incredulous looks of newscasters, and other well known personalities as he talked about the dangers of vaccination. His take on the American diet is right on.

There are many posts that seem to say that Bill Maher spreads woo to the American public. What he does is set the record straight. He is left of center, and that sometimes is misunderstood. Conservatism in this case is keeping the status quo, so those in power can work the crowd.

The news commentary shows have an advertising base that pulls the strings. Pharmaceuticals and processed food make up much of the advertising dollars. It is rare that you have a newscaster with enough knowledge to know that there is a problem with not just the health care industry, but the whole premise of drugs for health.

If anyone ever watched a pharmaceutical ad it is obvious that something is wrong. If anything Bill Maher is the true conservative. He is saying take care of your own health, so you don’t have to rely on radical treatments.

Is Bill really a true conservative?

A doctor squard will take on pharmaceutical ads. A new Federal Drug Administration program will urge doctors to blow the whistle on misleading drug advertisements.

The “bad ad program”

The “bad ad program” announced Tuesday, is “part of the agency’s latest effort to police the pharmaceutical industry’s multi-billion-dollar marketing machine,” The Associated Press reports.

The problem with this is program is The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) let the horse out of the barn quite awhile ago. The barn door is shut tight now, for any real opportunity to return to the way things should be.

Despite, this late and lame effort to curtail the pharmaceutical companies from reaching the TV audience with false and misleading adverisements, they still will have the lion’s share of sales through aggressive marketing.

Drug companies are legally required to present a balanced picture of a drug’s benefits  in promotions. That remains to be seen according to some critics.

Brands are aware of their marketing tactics, despite maintaining their compliance with the law. Drug companies make major investments in promotion drugs to doctors and layman alike.

Drug companies invested $12 billion on promoting drugs to doctors that is three times higher than ads aimed at consumers in 2008. That means they spent $4 billion on selling the consumer on the idea of using their drugs.

Drug Awareness

Drug awareness is really a war against time. The reason is that a pharmaceutical company has a certain amount of time to cash in on a drug. They have the intellectual rights for a certain period of time before it runs out. The other reason is drugs present dangers that will come out before they made their millions in profits.

The only guaranteed protection is consumer knowledge, which means that the citizens believe the only elements to good health is better living. The consumer is boss everywhere but in medicine. Positioning the consumer to emerge as the whistler blower is the best solution.

Doctors can report false advertising, but that will not help allopathic medicine climb up from the brink and make health care relevant.