On those prescription drug ads on TV
Roger L. Simon writes:
We have all sorts of advertisements for medical installations big and small competing for our attention (and money), but even worse we have virtually non-stop advertising for prescription drugs on television. Indeed they seem to dominate the medium appearing on cable and network alike to the degree that sometimes you wonder if there is anything else. …
The United States and New Zealand are the only countries where prescription drug ads are legal on television. …
We live in a society where pharmaceutical corporations hypnotize us into thinking there is a pill for everything. They are doing the same to the medical community on a daily basis for mutual gain. Too many doctors have become prisoners of both the pharmaceutical companies and themselves, leaning expectantly on lobbyists for the latest cure-alls. It’s a toxic syndrome that must be stopped.
Here’s some of the history:
Such promotion [of prescription drugs on TV] was banned until 1997, when the FDA reluctantly allowed pharmaceutical ads on TV, so long as they gave an accurate accounting of a medicine’s true benefits and risks, including a list of potential side effects.
There’s also this:
Direct-to-consumer advertising is really intended for consumers. As a primary care physician, people certainly come into my office with advertisements that they’ve printed off the internet or that they remember seeing during the football game the previous Sunday and say, “What about this drug?” Studies show that when patients come in and ask their physicians about particular drugs, they’re more likely to get prescriptions for those drugs. Doctors of course also watch TV, but the pharmaceutical industry spends much more money advertising its drugs directly to physicians, through visits to their offices, sponsorship of continuing medical education, support of professional society meetings, consultancies, and the like. Actually, the amount of money that pharmaceutical companies spend on advertising to physicians is far higher than the amount spent on direct-to-consumer advertising because physicians are the ones writing the prescriptions.
Roger Simon’s article starts this way:
My father was a doctor and when I was a kid in the 1950s I recall asking him why he didn’t advertise. Medicine was his business, wasn’t it? Normally responsive to my questions, he was taken aback, wondering how I would even countenance such a thing. The honorable medical profession was above that. They weren’t a bag of potato chips or the latest Chevrolet.
Well, drug companies aren’t physicians, but back then they didn’t advertise either – except in medical journals. I’m not sure when the latter started, but my father-in-law was a doctor and I recall in the 1970s seeing his journals filled with drug ads.
My own father was an attorney and accountant, and I remember his horror at the idea of attorneys advertising, even through ads in the Yellow Pages (the Yellow Pages are another ancient reference at this point, of course). My father also was incensed when attorneys starting billing by the hour. He billed by the job and had his own system; whatever it was, he was good at what he did and never lacked for business, some of it pro bono.
NOTE:
I also read an article a little while back (which unfortunately I can’t locate at the moment) that said that drug ads are a huge part of the support for TV, and without them a great many stations would go under.
The Ads do seem to be none ending. Newspapers are hurting for a number of reasons. One being Want Ads drying up. Big revenue stream for them. So, TV stations might go too. Well, with the streaming channels, I am sure they are hurting. Might be the proverbial straw.
I commented this morning at Roger’s blog that I noticed this advertising early on, because assignments kept me out of the USA for years at a go, with a one- or two-month home leave every two or three years. I saw my first ad on one of those home leaves. It urged patients to ask their physician for a prescription to some medication or another.
I think people who watch TV year-’round, even with intermittent gaps, are somewhat immune to changes in advertising, but for me it was a noticeable change. Yet when I asked a health care professional who lives in the USA what she thought of it, she had not even noticed the ads.
Roger is onto an important social change which I find troubling. He points out in the article that New Zealand is the only other country that allows such ads. I’m sure the Kiwis would be proud to know they share such a dubious distinction with us.
The ads are annoying, especially since Fox Business and Fox News don’t get a whole lot of other ads. The ad industry block on conservative TV persists, even though it doesn’t make sense to me for advertisers to eschew messages to half of the population. Usually, I don’t catch the ad’s beginning, and so when they go through all the awful side effects I wonder what condition the medication is for and why anyone would ever take it.
Let the TV stations go under
The ads are not for consumers. They are a way of bribing news organizations.
Advertising on news channels is notoriously ineffective. It’s just not warm and fuzzy content that you want your products associated with. Sporting events, sitcoms, etc, that’s more like it. And pharma ads are almost ridiculous, given that many of them suggest “mild improvement for some people in their minor condition with horrible enumerated side effects.”
It’s NOT that consumers are “asking their doctors if Drug X is right for them,” it’s that news organizations are not investigating their biggest advertisers. Which is helpful for those advertisers, and worth the investment.
The local station we tune into gets ads from various local service providers – funeral homes, contractors of various sorts, repair shops &c. The national ads we see are for pharmaceuticals and fast food chains. The most amusing part of the pharma ads are the lists of side effects.
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My own father was an attorney and accountant, and I remember his horror at the idea of attorneys advertising, even through ads in the Yellow Pages (the Yellow Pages are another ancient reference at this point, of course).
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That proved to have a natural ceiling. As for the medical profession, the only promotions I see are for institutions, not clinical practices. (Bar that one chiropractic office near me).
Charlie:
Yes, bribing news stations is the subject matter of that article I alluded to that I can’t find right now.
But the ads also affect consumers, as explained.
I understand, but it’s my contention that the overwhelmingly primary purpose is making the news organizations beholden to the pharmaceutical industry.
As one of your quotes mentions, pharma actually spends much more marketing to doctors than to consumers.
And as I mentioned, companies that want to influence consumers tend to skew their television advertising far AWAY from news shows. Pharma, by contrast, skews their television advertising strongly TOWARD news shows.
It paid off massively during Covid. News organizations directly and indirectly promoted the Covid vaccines. Not via ads, but via intensive positive news coverage in the news programming. BOTH the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines set the record for biggest corporate product launches in business history, with Year One revenue for EACH of those two vaccines exceeding revenues from any other product launch, including Color TV, Fedex, Volkswagen Beetle, Toyota Camry, iPhone, iPad, etc.
Yes, pharma ads sort of promote our pill popping culture, but they put those ads on news shows instead of on sitcoms and dramas and NBA games for a reason. They want and need news on their side. For positive coverage and, more importantly, an absence of negative coverage. And indeed, the pharmaceutical companies get what they pay for.
There’s a famous old 60 minutes episode (1976) where they embarrass the head of the CDC who allowed a dangerous swine flu vaccine to hurt a lot of people. Suffice it to say, neither 60 minutes nor any other network news show does stories like that anymore.
Sorry not buying.
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Just looked up the old episode. Amazing stuff. Apparently they did this big vaccination campaign against swine flu and after the fact they admitted that there were never any confirmed cases of swine flue. The CDC head was embarrassed as an obviously dishonest bureaucrat. The whole story is worth watching, but the minute with the CDC guy starting at 5:30 is a must watch. You can just imagine the pharma execs and their captured regulators watching this and saying, “this can never happen again.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bOHYZhL0WQ
Now they’re doing adverts for drugs your dog needs.
Back in the day, I found Léon Brillouin listed in the NYC Yellow Pages under physicist. His was the only entry 🙂
I also recall the scandal of the first email ad. Times have changed.
Don’t some pharmaceutical companies pay certain Doctors monthly “stipends” to prescribe their non-generic (patents unexpired) medications?
The average age of the viewers of broadcast TV is about 68, particularly the news shows. Younger generations clearly did not adopt this habit.
This is a perfect place for drug companies to advertise.
Me: Is this Rx drug with all of the scary side effects that I see advertised on TV right for me?
MD: If it were right for you, I would have prescribed it long ago. Stop watching that offal on TV.
A popular comedian or YouTube influencer could make a bundle from Big Pharma. An opportunity resides in their having to inform the public about the possibility of truly scary side effects.
Simply by starting a campaign riffing on the ‘russian roulette’ that the public participates in with big pharma’s symptomatic alleviating drugs. When big pharma predictably complains, the comedian/influencer could quietly suggest that for a suitable ‘donation’ they could be ‘persuaded’ to explore other ‘fields of opportunity’. After all, isn’t that what many in Congress do?
I remember that advertising by lawyers was prohibited, or at least it was severely frowned upon by the bar association. I thought that was a tipping point when lawyers started advertising because it said openly “we’re in it for the bucks”.
If you were a Martian, and just relied on what you saw on TV, you’d think that Americans are trudging around–on death’s door–plagued with a myriad of conditions which make their lives hell, and suck the life out of them.
If you pay attention to the side effects of these drugs, many of them are far worse–and sometimes permanent, like Tardive dyskinesia–than the ailments these drugs are supposed to alleviate.
Moreover, I’ve noticed that some of these ads never actually spell out what illness or condition their drug is supposed to be aimed at.
Also noted, a lot of ads which, in essence, normalize and promote a gay or promiscuous lifestyle.
We’d be a lot better off just banning all pharmaceutical ads, but obviously “big Pharma” has a lot of money and political power at it’s disposal.
Also noted, a lot of ads which, in essence, normalize and promote a gay or promiscuous lifestyle.
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Not a lot, but the ones they broadcast are bloody embarrassing.
We’re currently living in a small metropolis wherein the tract development touches on two counties with a population in sum of about 255,000. Doing some back-of-the-envelope figuring, I believe there are north of 300 lawyers in private practice in these two counties. I count about four for whom I see advertisements. Again, the only medical professional for whom I see ads is a single chiropractic practice (all female, soft sell on local news). Physicians and lawyers are permitted to advertise. Few of them wish to do so.
The average age of the viewers of broadcast TV is about 68, particularly the news shows. Younger generations clearly did not adopt this habit. This is a perfect place for drug companies to advertise.
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Did not occur to Charlie, who appears to be of an age about half the median for this board.
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(I’d already taken Xarelto before Arnold Palmer was hawking it).
Now they’re doing adverts for drugs your dog needs.
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Haven’t seen any of those, just the awful ads for ‘Fresh Pet’.
I don’t understand why anybody pays attention to TV commercials.
I don’t.
OK, sometimes I do.
When I see a commercial for a drug, I pay attention to all the bad side-effects they cite.
It’s usually a pretty long list.
Long enough where they either have to speed up the audio to fit in all the negative aspects of the drug or maybe they just hire some speed-talking, Guinness Book World Record competitor.
And I am still trying to figure out how they arrive at the names for these drugs; they are truly bizarre.
Does anybody know??
Ya, these names for drugs these days are bizarre, and are certainly not inviting; pretty nasty sounding, some of them, they sound like they themselves are names for obscure diseases you really wouldn’t want to contract, or even be anywhere near to.
Did anyone just have a computer put together random letters, did they even try and run these names past a panel of consumers?
Bottom line, these pharmaceutical ads are just a pain in the ass, which I would not miss at all.
Did anyone just have a computer put together random letters, did they even try and run these names past a panel of consumers?
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You’ve forgotten the Dilbert cartoon on the meeting where the name for a new subsidiary was discussed. “We put together a program which randomly combined terms from astronomy and electricity”. “What name did you come up with?” “Uranus Hertz”.
Art Deco @ 12:13 PM
Re: Dilbert cartoon / Uranus Hertz.
Reminds me of that song made famous by Johnny Cash, “Ring of Fire.”
Turns out that Cash had a very severe case of hemorrhoids which motivated him to sing that song. It became a big hit for him in 1963.
Alas, it did not relieve his burning symptoms.
“Did not occur to Charlie, who appears to be of an age about half the median for this board.”
Everything has occurred to Charlie. He’s telling you the actual truth. He is also OLDER than the median for this board.
68 year olds tend to revere their doctors. Who have them on 10 prescriptions already. Consumers influence pharmaceutical purchasing decisions less than almost any other product they purchase, because it’s so indirect, with doctors and insurance companies doing the real shopping. Of course TV drug advertising doesn’t hurt, but it doesn’t move the needle nearly as much as bribing the news organizations does. Pfizer’s revenues DOUBLED during Covid, with plenty of help from the news. The Covid vaccine generated almost as much revenue as all other Pfizer products combined. This didn’t happen because of doctors or ads. This happened because of the news.
It’s not a TV thing, it’s a NEWS thing. Big Pharma is the also the singest largest industry source of newspaper revenues. And news website revenues. In case you haven’t heard, the news industry is in financial trouble. They don’t want to cross their benefactors. Without them, journalists would lose their jobs and news organizations would go bankrupt. In 1976, 60 minutes ran stories like the big expose about the dangerous and unnecessary Swine Flu vaccine and the lying CDC. Nowadays, you don’t see that type of story.
He is also OLDER than the median for this board.
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You mean you’re 80 years old but do not remember the swine flu vaccination campaign? Where were you living in 1976?
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He’s telling you the actual truth.
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If I defined ‘actual truth’ to mean ‘something I read on ZeroHedge’.
One of the commercials for drugs for your pets( dogs mostly) is about arthritis ( in dogs mostly). Yes I love the side effects warnings about drugs in general. ” If you’re experiencing symptoms of death talk to your doctor”! First the advert guys then the lawyers!
68 year olds tend to revere their doctors.
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Do you know many 68 year olds or many doctors?