the aesthetics of television commercials for prescription drugs

how did this happen? do people actually ask their doctors about whether a specific medication 'might be right' for them? why are all the ads -- people laughing/hiking/awkwardly doing something with a child/being grey-haired and lounging in separate baths alongside their partners -- like this?

it doesn't seem like it should be more effective than a guy rapping about blue-blocker sunglasses, but it remains pervasive

extra points off to 'abilify' for being the worst drug name ever

Hulu seems really invested in these

Side effect warnings get worse with every drug generation. There's one that pops up on Hulu that includes some kind of horror befalling your taint.

When I drop stuff off at my mom's in the afternoon there's an ad that plays on the local news for treating Peyronie's Disease, a bend in the penis. Did Peyronie's Disease exist 20 years ago? Does it really exist now? Are they just giving old guys with a strong dick curve body dysmorphia? Are there right angle dicks on golf courses around the country?

ooh yes the bendy penis one is a classic of the form

ask your doctor if

xyzzzz__

because you owe it to your family to outlast

ange

the thing i constantly think about is not just the pushing of the drug but the pushing of the disease - like some of these drugs seem to be created to prevent invented diseases or conditions

like the whole industrial complex started back with the ceaseless promotion of oxycontin for pain conditions that did not exist and so many of these drugs are just spiralling insanely out from there ever since

also nothing makes me want to walk into the ocean more than 3 back to back medication commercials like fuck me i’d rather stare at the wall

Best drug name ever - Ondansetron

Anti nausea medication, never seen an advert for it but mookie did mention the worst name.

These ads are one of the weirdest things to me when visiting America. I've seen them the occasional time I flick on the hotel telly. Just very alien, prescription drugs only exist as a thing your doctor recommends over here, as far as I can tell.

wow i cant believe there isnt more appreciation for wet AMD in this thread

Tremfiya always makes me think of the post-apocalyptic slang of The 100.

tbf last week i actually did ask my doctor whether an MMR vaccine booster might be right for me

but that’s because i live in a country administered by clowns

the thing i constantly think about is not just the pushing of the drug but the pushing of the disease - like some of these drugs seem to be created to prevent invented diseases or conditions

This is exactly right as I understand it, except that I think you have the temporality backwards: thousands upon thousands of chemical compounds are synthesized (often by slightly varying the molecular chemistry of an existing drug or a naturally occurring molecule that can't be patented). They are tested in vitro and the ones that do something interesting are patented and tested in animals, and the most promising of those go to marketers who say "How can we pathologize whatever condition this drug inhibits?" and voila, Restless Leg Syndrome is born just in time for Legnumbitol to begin human trials

My husband has restless leg syndrome. It's not a made-up condition.

I apologize. I overstepped. I used restless leg syndrome as a punchline because it was easy, which is not fair to people who suffer from it. I stand by my characterization of the pharmaceutical industry and its distorting impact on medical knowledge in our time.

my wife and I have a running joke that I would be a good actor in one of these commercials. it seems like a pretty easy gig, tbh.

Anti nausea medication, never seen an advert for it but mookie did mention the worst name.

also prescribed as a painkiller and a good one in my experience

(ondansetron, that is)

this:

thousands upon thousands of chemical compounds are synthesized (often by slightly varying the molecular chemistry of an existing drug or a naturally occurring molecule that can't be patented). They are tested in vitro and the ones that do something interesting are patented and tested in animals, and the most promising of those go to marketers who say "How can we pathologize whatever condition this drug inhibits?"

is a pretty severe distortion imo. nobody is "testing in vitro" prior to a hypothesis about what something's going to do, and new diagnoses have a process quite different from what you're describing. what can happen is that an isolated symptom, if it turns out to be targeted by a chemical -- which can 100% be a surprising result of a trial, happens all the time -- can be "pathologized," but in my view that is not a bad thing. imagine having had a weird thing your whole life and having been told it's all in your head or you need more potassium or you gotta stretch more, and then somebody says, no, what you have is this muscle spasm we're learning more about, this condition has a name now. yes: this is big business, as soon as this happens the first question on the business side asks is "how can we make piles of money off this?" but to cast the researchers as part of a scheme to invent pathologies is imo slandering scientists who are actually doing good research

i'm not gonna comment from the disease/patient point of view but as always follow the money. everybody knows about the big pharma companies like astrazeneca, merck, pfizer etc. but there is also a very big industry of VCs that focus on biotech start ups.

getting a drug approved is very hard and expensive. fda phase 1, 2, and 3 trials are pretty rigorous (well who knows now under this administration) and companies spend a lot of time waiting around for the trials and the results, keeping the company funded during that isn't cheap. the crash rate is pretty high and when a biotech start-ups drug crashes out the company basically just disbands.

so in a sense it's very much like silicon valley, VCs place many different bets on many different start ups, a lot of those companies value will go to 0 but there'll be a few that succeed and so when one does there's gonna be a lot of pressure to rake it in to make up for all the others. i imagine tv ads are just a drop in the bucket compared to all that's gone into keeping those companies funded. (i mean, that's what happens at the big pharma companies too but those companies usually have cash cows from current winners that can keep them going for a long long time.)

you can get a sense from the below graph of just how hockey stick the growth in biotech funding has been

https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2024/03/chart.png

(from https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/analyst-comment/biotech-funding-optimism-rises/?cf-view)

JCLC it's true I am distorting and talking shit about stuff I don't know.

I just get really angry sometimes about living in the U.S.A. I'm still mad about the PBS Frontline documentary from 2008, with the researcher who looked at overdiagnosis of ADHD in children and said "Lots of these kids would score highly on the adult evaluation for bipolar disorder based on their reported behavior" (the point being that "reported behavior" is low quality diagnostic data, not that we should be treating the kids for BPD) but one monkey's paw curl later, the pharma industry is on a massive push to raise awareness of childhood BPD.

Recently they did a followup with some of the kids from the 2008 documentary, one of them was working with a therapist to manage the autism that she now believed to be the underlying reason for her childhood behavioral issues. Another was taking 4 daily medications, talking to ChatGPT because he can't afford to see a therapist, and said the biggest improvement came when he started using the gym regularly.

JCLC it's true I am distorting and talking shit about stuff I don't know.

I just get really angry sometimes about living in the U.S.A. I'm still mad about the PBS Frontline documentary from 2008, with the researcher who looked at overdiagnosis of ADHD in children and said "Lots of these kids would score highly on the adult evaluation for bipolar disorder based on their reported behavior" (the point being that "reported behavior" is low quality diagnostic data, not that we should be treating the kids for BPD) but one monkey's paw curl later, the pharma industry is on a massive push to raise awareness of childhood BPD.

Recently they did a followup with some of the kids from the 2008 documentary, one of them was working with a therapist to manage the autism that she now believed to be the underlying reason for her childhood behavioral issues. Another was taking 4 daily medications, talking to ChatGPT because he can't afford to see a therapist, and said the biggest improvement came when he started using the gym regularly.

there's an Otezla one on now where a guy is meeting his Tinder date at the Otezla theater which is shot in kind of a deranged way, it's full of these weird dramatic action shots of people watching a movie. would love to know what this has to do with the product

the like 30 full seconds of listing off side effects over footage of smiling people is always so uncanny. feels like satire

Every commercial is shot kind of like a boner pill ad. Easily could be “don’t disappoint your movie date when it’s time to perform” but it’s actually just managing your IBS (except for the times the new med makes you shit yourself to death).

those HIMS ads make me want to walk into traffic, all the actors look like Nylon magazine “alternative” models

Easily could be “don’t disappoint your movie date when it’s time to perform” but it’s actually just managing your IBS

yeah the IBS ones lay on a heavier guilt trip, it's always "don't disappoint your family, don't miss your kid's recital". i mean, yeah, these things are obviously important but i can't imagine it's good to be watching tv and to be constantly REMINDED of how your bowels caused you to miss a special family moment or something.

It's not just about guilt or disapponting others tho, not being able to get to things because of ibs is one of the main ways in which ibs sucks. As the target audience sure this reminds me of that and makes me wish there was a fix, it's doing its job.

Unlike the medication it's hawking, none of which has ever helped me with my IBS in any way.

Have we entered the era where the side effects from one drug are being mentioned as treatable by another drug from the same company? I feel like that is the end goal with all this.

they should do a buy 3 get one free rx combo loco deal

i hear you, dnaiel_rf, and i'm sorry you have to deal with that. :(

sorry for mispelling

Thanks brimstead

My favorite instances of side effects are those where the drug can cause the same symptoms it is supposed to alleviate.

When the anti-depressant causes suicidal thoughts that’s when you know it’s working. Gotta get worse to get better.

"Do not take medication if you are allergic to medication."

".. you put the lime in the coconut, and mix them both together..."

My favorite instances of side effects are those where the drug can cause the same symptoms it is supposed to alleviate.

For instance every skin treatment ever.