Big Pharma: incurable but treatable

"Spontaneous intestinal combustion and rot, multiple organ failure and liquefaction, migrating clots, pooling of congealed discolored blood, malignant hemorrhaging,  sudden projectile vomiting of bile, catalepsy and massive skin slippage. If these or other side effects occur, call your doctor.”

Although this is a fictional disclaimer from a pharmaceutical company's advertisement for their latest drug, it could easily pass as legitimate. Perhaps even an understatement. 

If on television, it would be hundreds of words long in the tiniest letters and appear on the screen against a background of the same color, for a few seconds so that the speediest readers on earth couldn't tell if they'd seen words or dwarf ants. 

Above the print are invariably scenes of joyous family reunions, barbeques, impromptu, multi-generational games of hoops, romantic frolics on beaches and sundry other unrestricted, wholesome activities that subliminally deliver, through effective visualized messaging, that these patients really don't have a care in the world, and that the scary disclaimer should be taken "with a grain of salt." 

Of course, it's not stated directly or clearly.

By creating the appearance that the advertiser is being held to a trustworthy standard of public disclosure, a legal mandate is met. That's all the designers of the latest miracle products care about.

Some of their medications may be as dangerous as the conditions they are marketed to treat.

The Department of Health and Human Services, believing that "direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising must prioritize accuracy, patient safety, and the public interest — not profit margins,” claims to be “exploring ways to restore more rigorous oversight and improve the quality of information presented to American consumers.”

The pharmaceutical manufacturers have the shameless temerity to claim that their direct advertising to consumers is in the interest of educating them fully. They would have us believe their commercials are public service announcements geared to make more informed decisions about our health care. And that in good faith they embrace wholeheartedly the Food and Drug Administration's mandate that side effects be listed. 

Empowerment ruse meets Buyer Beware. The noxious ads have polluted the airwaves for 40 years, largely replacing marketing of cereals, toothpaste, detergents and hair dyes.

There is only one solution: restore total prohibition of these slick commercials, produced in consultation with industrial psychologists to dupe and entrap the public into mindless confidence. 

Big Pharma's television advertising blitz has the paradoxical effect of making consumers more ignorant, rather than better informed, by using tricks developed by consulted industrial psychologists. The targeted consumers may not be entirely clueless, but they have been driven into a fog.

Until around 40 years ago, prescription medicine advertisements were banned on television in this country. Since 1997, the drug companies can buy up all the available airtime to push their proprietary potions they can afford.

New Zealand is the only other country that allows this corporate pharma informational waterboarding of public guinea pigs.

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, feigning advocacy for the quarry of their industry's deceptions, says, "Direct-to- consumers (DTC) commercials consist of ‘fact-based research’ to ensure "patients are better informed about their healthcare and treatment options."

That's accountabaloney (a blogger's coinage). They might as well quote a late comic actor and presidential candidate, "We've upped our standards. Now up yours."

Big Pharma injects double-digit billions of dollars annually into immensely profitable "direct to consumer" indoctrination pitches. They will do anything to maintain their cozy relationships with regulatory agencies like the FDA, donor-sensitive politicians, fixers and cabinet secretaries.

And the media outlets certainly have a stake as well. Their predation on the public's credulity delivers symbiotic bottom-line benefits to both of them.

Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, recently introduced the End Prescription Ads Now Act, which would have purged them from digital platforms and social media, print, radio and television. But it will never happen for many reasons, including the likely resulting spike in litigation against the government.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who recently laid off thousands of employees without cause, is an unpredictable maverick, and Pharma can't risk antagonizing him. He's reportedly considering a compulsory expansion of product information for consumers, but all that'll accomplish is piling more hodgepodge on top of gobbledygook. 

Another idea is to disallow the existing practice of these advertising costs from being treated as tax-deduction eligible business expenses.

Advertising is not the only Pharma-related issue that should concern us. There is also the FDA approval process, jacked up costs of new meds, product liability and the scandal of physicians' getting paid off with free vacations in exchange for almost indiscriminately prescribing new drugs. That status quo has got to go. 

According to CNN, President Trump has called for drug companies to be able to sell to patients at a "most favored nation price,” which would be "tied to lower prices paid in other developed countries.”

The FDA is currently part of both the solution and part of the problem in equal measure. They are right not to compromise on requiring a high standard of proven safety and effectiveness, but their protocols and timetables are not solely science-based but subjected to political and insider tampering. 

The drug companies have almost 2,000 lobbyists from both parties. They make megabucks.

The new FDA commissioner, Mark Makary, sounds like he has a good head without chips on his shoulders. He should maintain a high level of manufacturers' liability while hastening the approval process for new drugs without sacrificing scientific criteria for safety and effectiveness. This might also help lower costs.

There should also be legislation to more rigidly regulate hundreds of "natural vitamins" and related products that consumers mistakenly assume are harmless because they are "over the counter." And radio infomercials for physicians' businesses should also be curbed, even when their credentials are not in doubt.

One guy in New York City is on the air every day for marathon lengths on multiple channels,  sometimes referring to competing service providers in "super pooper hospitals" who may throw patients' organs into garbage cans, or perform surgeries that may shrink males' reproductive members. 

It's amazing that even hundreds of years ago, people sometimes reached old age, even though there were no antibiotics, vaccinations, sterile surgeries or clean water. It's no less astonishing that today we often achieve geriatric status, given the chemical lobotomies and head games performed on us by Big Pharma and their satellite sharks.

Then again, life expectancy is falling.