It is hard not to think that the corporate dollar and advertising rule the roost in America. The evidence is clearly there in how they allow companies to advertise their products to the unwary and the ignorant. It is open slather in the States for Big Pharma to directly advertise their medicines for all sorts of conditions to the general public. Advertising is in the business of selling products and what they are doing in America is creating markets for pharmaceutical products. Big Pharma advertising: Ethics are the casualty.
Marketeers and advertising executives are creating conditions like Female Sexual Dysfunction (FSD), so that pharmaceutical companies can sell products they have developed. Viagra was so successful in terms of unit sales to men, the industry wanted to repeat that success with women; the other half of the population. The best way to sell a product is to convince a section of the market they have a problem that this product will cure. We have seen it with Depression; overnight it became a major problem if people were overly sad or unmotivated. Big Pharma had developed Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs), a class of drugs they wished to market as a cure for depression; and so it was suddenly being prescribed by doctors for all those with symptoms of melancholia. There are now children being prescribed these drugs all over the world.
Big Pharma Advertising: Ethics Are the Casualty
Big Pharma are as successful in marketing their drugs in countries like Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, despite the tighter advertising regulations in these places. This is because, they engage powerful PR companies who provide news quality footage directly to the television stations and networks in the cities within these nations. When the unsuspecting viewer, watching their nightly news program, sees the footage about the medical breakthrough in the treatment of depression or sexual dysfunction, they think it is a real journalistic piece. When in actual fact it is pure PR produced to look like journalism; and cut-backs to editorial departments in news programs has paved the way for more and more of this deceitful advertising dressed up as editorial.
Pain relief is another massive Big Pharma lie, with consumers encouraged to believe that these products can relieve pain, when that pain is often a messenger about lack of hydration, poor diet or something more serious. Natural pain relief and natural back pain relief are available without resort to medications. All it requires is a little intelligent investigation into alternatives.