G
Guest
Guest
Read, discuss, whatever; I like the writer's sarcasm. My inspiration to post was OnD's presidential requirements thread.
- Perdita
___________________________
Giant Floating Purple Pills - Are those creepy prescription-drug commercials on TV trying to kill you?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist, Nov. 21, 2003, ©2003 SF Gate
Cut to picture of healthy-looking yuppie guy emerging from swimming pool and smiling.
Cut to picture of mother twirling her child in the park in slo-mo. Cut to picture of woman taking deep whiffs of fresh-cut lilies at the florist and grinning warmly as if the world was one big gob of perky happy fluffy bunny joy. Yay. Drugs. Yay.
Celebrex can make you feel like you again. Celebrex is a revolutionary new breakthrough in medicine technology. Celebrex is not for everyone. Ask your doctor if Celebrex is right for you.
Side effects may include nausea diarrhea anxiety sleeplessness headaches projectile vomiting genital warts narcolepsy halitosis death bed wetting pained nightmares involving angry bloodsucking poodles and the mad uncontrollable desire to smash your head into a brick wall over and over again until you stop screaming.
Do not use Celebrex if you are recently deceased. Do not use Celebrex if you are already experiencing heart palpitations or night sweats or screaming terrified wolf howls or if you take any other medication that begins with the letter C.
Pregnant or nursing mothers should not use Celebrex, unless you want your child to become a mutant deformed pygmy three-armed libertarian with 17 toes and the IQ of a small canned ham.
If you are absolutely certain nothing is wrong with you and you feel fine and hence you do not need Celebrex, this is actually the first troubling sign that Celebrex is exactly what you need. Contact your doctor immediately, if not sooner.
If you are right now watching this TV commercial for Celebrex and have no idea what the hell Celebrex is because we don't ever actually tell you what the hell it is, and, hence, if you feel the pharmaceutical industry is this freakish mega-powerful mind-control cult fully bent on convincing as much of the human population as possible that wildly expensive prescription meds are the answer to all your problems, this, too, means you should take our medication, pronto.
And if you go so far as to dare to think that maybe, just maybe, alternative medicine or homeopathy or just becoming much, much more aware of your life and what you eat and how you live might, in fact, negate the need for a great many of the drugs we manufacture, and if you believe that we might actually invent bogus ailments and drill a fear of them into the cultural consciousness, all in order to supply you with the narcotics to treat them, well, have we got a nice pill for you.
Sound familiar? It should. It was in 1997 that the FDA finally loosened the rules on DTCA (direct-to-consumer advertising), finally let them loose upon the unsuspecting and completely unprepared populace, and thus were major pharmaceutical companies given the right to advertise like savage and shameless maniacs on national television.
And they were allowed to hawk extremely expensive and often toxic drugs designed to relieve you of various debilitating ailments, but not even really tell you what those products actually do, or why, or how much they cost, or anything at all except for a quick charming listing of possible side effects, each of which seems to involve some sort of stomach recoil and skin eruption and painful bowel shift.
But there was a study. There is always a study. By the Kaiser Family Foundation. A couple years ago. It said that one in eight people who saw a drug commercial on TV did, in fact, ask their doctor about it, and 44 percent of those actually got themselves a prescription for that drug.
Sadly enough, drug ads work. In 1997, pharmcos spent $791 million on TV ads. Today that figure is well over $3 billion. This is why you can't turn on the TV without seeing some inexplicable commercial for some bizarre-sounding drug that features as its active ingredient siflintrate oxygtoralnyzincotim but which they call Happium or maybe Numbium. Drugs have become just another everyday consumer good, like Campbell's soup or Windex or a new Toyota Camry.
[full article via url below]
giant floating purple pills
- Perdita
___________________________
Giant Floating Purple Pills - Are those creepy prescription-drug commercials on TV trying to kill you?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist, Nov. 21, 2003, ©2003 SF Gate
Cut to picture of healthy-looking yuppie guy emerging from swimming pool and smiling.
Cut to picture of mother twirling her child in the park in slo-mo. Cut to picture of woman taking deep whiffs of fresh-cut lilies at the florist and grinning warmly as if the world was one big gob of perky happy fluffy bunny joy. Yay. Drugs. Yay.
Celebrex can make you feel like you again. Celebrex is a revolutionary new breakthrough in medicine technology. Celebrex is not for everyone. Ask your doctor if Celebrex is right for you.
Side effects may include nausea diarrhea anxiety sleeplessness headaches projectile vomiting genital warts narcolepsy halitosis death bed wetting pained nightmares involving angry bloodsucking poodles and the mad uncontrollable desire to smash your head into a brick wall over and over again until you stop screaming.
Do not use Celebrex if you are recently deceased. Do not use Celebrex if you are already experiencing heart palpitations or night sweats or screaming terrified wolf howls or if you take any other medication that begins with the letter C.
Pregnant or nursing mothers should not use Celebrex, unless you want your child to become a mutant deformed pygmy three-armed libertarian with 17 toes and the IQ of a small canned ham.
If you are absolutely certain nothing is wrong with you and you feel fine and hence you do not need Celebrex, this is actually the first troubling sign that Celebrex is exactly what you need. Contact your doctor immediately, if not sooner.
If you are right now watching this TV commercial for Celebrex and have no idea what the hell Celebrex is because we don't ever actually tell you what the hell it is, and, hence, if you feel the pharmaceutical industry is this freakish mega-powerful mind-control cult fully bent on convincing as much of the human population as possible that wildly expensive prescription meds are the answer to all your problems, this, too, means you should take our medication, pronto.
And if you go so far as to dare to think that maybe, just maybe, alternative medicine or homeopathy or just becoming much, much more aware of your life and what you eat and how you live might, in fact, negate the need for a great many of the drugs we manufacture, and if you believe that we might actually invent bogus ailments and drill a fear of them into the cultural consciousness, all in order to supply you with the narcotics to treat them, well, have we got a nice pill for you.
Sound familiar? It should. It was in 1997 that the FDA finally loosened the rules on DTCA (direct-to-consumer advertising), finally let them loose upon the unsuspecting and completely unprepared populace, and thus were major pharmaceutical companies given the right to advertise like savage and shameless maniacs on national television.
And they were allowed to hawk extremely expensive and often toxic drugs designed to relieve you of various debilitating ailments, but not even really tell you what those products actually do, or why, or how much they cost, or anything at all except for a quick charming listing of possible side effects, each of which seems to involve some sort of stomach recoil and skin eruption and painful bowel shift.
But there was a study. There is always a study. By the Kaiser Family Foundation. A couple years ago. It said that one in eight people who saw a drug commercial on TV did, in fact, ask their doctor about it, and 44 percent of those actually got themselves a prescription for that drug.
Sadly enough, drug ads work. In 1997, pharmcos spent $791 million on TV ads. Today that figure is well over $3 billion. This is why you can't turn on the TV without seeing some inexplicable commercial for some bizarre-sounding drug that features as its active ingredient siflintrate oxygtoralnyzincotim but which they call Happium or maybe Numbium. Drugs have become just another everyday consumer good, like Campbell's soup or Windex or a new Toyota Camry.
[full article via url below]
giant floating purple pills
