Stop the madness! February 25, 2008

In the fall of 1975 I took up residence in Louisville, Kentucky. Memories from that era include traffic that meandered through the streets as if time was standing still; Angie Umphrey (really Humphrey, but when she pronounced it the “H” was silent), a local weather reporter did commercials for Big O Tires; reports of bank robberies were a staple on the nightly news.

Across the street from the office where I worked was a bar called “Babe’s.” We often gathered there after work, as did football legend Paul Hornung — he always sat at the bar with a blonde babe on his lap.

Thursday night was wet t-shirt contest at Babe’s; Wolfman Jack even hosted one of the galas (he was shorter in person).

Everywhere I’d go, when introduced as Mel Metts, someone would ask, “Any kin to Milton?”

And Louisville was in the national spotlight because Humana Hospital had installed one of the early artificial hearts known as the Jarvik-7, invented by researcher Robert Jarvik and Dr. William DeVries. I say “installed,” because the heart was a blood-pump that operated outside the body, and it wasn’t until 1982 that the Jarvic heart was inserted into a human body.

Fast-forward to 2006, when Dr. Robert Jarvik began touting Lipitor in television commercials. Then fast-forward to today, when Phizer Parmaceuticals agreed to pull those ads from tv, in response to criticism that Robert Jarvik — not a medical doctor — created the false impression (in the ads) that he is a licensed M.D. Who knew? In this report, a congressional committee believes that Phizer may have used a body double in some ads.

In this article, Mike Adams questions the ethics of pharmaceutical commercials:

“Television drug ads engage in such blatant deceptions and exaggerations that even the medical journals are starting to condemn the practice. This week, the Annals of Family Medicine published an analysis of popular drug advertisements that concluded the ads essentially lie to the public about the benefits of pharmaceuticals while utterly ignoring alternative health strategies like dietary or lifestyle changes.

“The advertising practices of drug companies are so outrageous that even David Kessler, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, penned an editorial condemning them. In fact, Kessler says television ads never should have been allowed by the FDA in the first place (the FDA legalized drug ads in late 1997, after Kessler left his position there). Today, the United States is the only industrialized nation in the world to allow drug ads on television.”

And that’s my point. Commercials for pharmaceuticals do not add value, only cost as huge advertising bugets are factored into the retail pricing of these drugs. The FDA erred in 1997 when they began allowing these commercials, and the error needs to be corrected.

You can’t even protect your children from these ads describing erectile dysfunction (“Daddy, what is erectile dysfunction?”) and other disorders best screened from the minds of our young’uns.

Stop the madness. End these commercials!