Author: Lily Rowen
Picture this: You have just sat down to watch your favorite TV show or listen to your favorite radio station when an advertisement annoyingly interrupts you. With dark, intimidating lighting and a disturbingly depressing voice-over, the ad asks, “Are you one of the millions suffering from cancer?” Or, it may start out with a fear-invoking statistic like, “Did you know that heart disease is currently the number one killer in the U.S.? It kills more people than cancer, diabetes, and respiratory problems combined.”
So much for enjoying your favorite show! Now your brain is launching into an ultimate anxiety mode, as you ask yourself if you may be exhibiting early symptoms of diseases such as diabetes, heart disease or asthma. Or maybe you are just reflecting silently on a friend or family member whom you have lost to such conditions, wishing that your form of escapism (TV or radio) had played upbeat Target or Cool-Whip ads on the commercial breaks instead. It is in this moment of contemplation or anxiety that the drug companies, who aired the ad, have hooked you.
The companies that market products like Levitra, Lipitor, Prozac and Prilosec want you to be scared so that you will ask your doctor about their products. (Your doctor, in turn, may be more inclined to start you on such drugs if they know that they will be financially compensated by the drug companies). However, these advertising methods are not only often false, but they are unethical and immoral to a certain extent. Their objective is to scare you and to make you feel horrible, which would not be an acceptable business goal in any other industry except maybe the Life Insurance industry, Car Insurance industry, haunted house industry, or if you are Hillary Clinton campaigning for President.
There are, however, real things to be feared from these advertisements, which are referred to as “direct-to-consumer” advertisements, according to The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), a pharmaceutical trading group. Since the legalization of direct-to-consumer advertising in 1985, the price that the consumer has to pay for prescription drugs has risen enormously, greatly contributing to our health care woes today. Meanwhile, PhRMA has also reported increases in profits of the overall industry every year.
What is even worse is that this type of truly demeaning advertising has spilled over into the realm of medical charities. Now the American Heart Association can state that heart disease is the number one killer of Americans annually, providing more reason to donate to their cause. While I agree that heart disease is a problem in need of dire fundraising and assistance (most people in my family have died of heart attacks and strokes), I disagree with the greedy ways of “marketing” the problem. The tone used in such advertisements and on Web sites encourages competition among various organizations, which seems juvenile and useless. When did donating to an organization for cancer become challenged by heart disease prevention advocates, and when did the Lung Association of America have to begin to market its statistics in order to compete with the American Diabetes Association?
As humans, and Americans, we deserve better than this. Our moments of relaxation in front of the television, surfing the Web or listening to the radio should not be impeded by advertisements of such an unethical nature. Remember, we are the consumers, and we can advocate change through the use (and non-use) of our wallets. If you don’t like what you see, you are free to change the channel, and the television networks will quickly get the hint that you do not approve of their choices in advertisers.
So don’t let those drug advertisements get you down. Stay optimistic about your health and do not fall prey to the hypochondria instigated by advertising.
Lily Rowen is an undeclared sophomore. She can be reached at rowen@oxy.edu.
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