Ad Nauseum: A Look at Who's Scripting the News
Can RFK Jr. really effect TV's farewell to Pharma?
*Happy New Year’s Eve, fam! Are we finally putting this yahoo of a year to bed???
I figure nobody is going to be particularly interested in checking their email tomorrow (we’ll all be too busy at the gym, right? Hahahahahaha but maybe?) so I wanted to reach out one final time so we can bid an enthusiastic adieu to the roller coaster
that was twenty-twenty-four together.
I hope you all enjoy a festive, rollicking, and safe (or relaxing, sober, and cozy) New Year’s. Please know how sincerely grateful I am for all of your comments, contributions, likes, and shares. This substack has become a shining light in my life—something that could never happen without enlightened and engaged readers. Cheers to a promising new year
filled with better days, bottomless hope, lots of laughs,
and zero minimal bad decisions.
As an author, having blurbs—those little endorsement quotes—on your book cover can really help drive sales. To be effective, blurbs should be truthful, convincing, and compelling, and ideally attributable to a recognizable, noteworthy, and otherwise unbiased name.
For example, this would be an epic book blurb:
“Immediately after reading Jenna’s latest masterpiece, I invented a new color, taught myself to speak dolphin, and reengineered the concept of time so I could go back and not post last week’s crude, embarrassing tweet. I didn’t just buy this book; I memorized it.” — Elon Musk
Now imagine you’re perusing the New Releases at Barnes & Noble (do those even exist anymore?) and you spot this on a cover:
“This is the best book ever written. Everyone should buy it.” — The Author
At the risk of insulting anyone’s intelligence here, the latter would be laughably ineffective because of course the author is going to say that. It would sort of be like Bill Gates, for random example, encouraging you to take a worthless, possibly lethal vaccine that he just so happens to make a boatload of dough off of, or Quentin Tarantino joining the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the sole purpose of nominating himself for Best Director. Just a wee conflict of interest, wouldn’t you say?
If conflicts of interest had a mascot, it would be pharmaceutical advertising. Media outlets, desperate for those massive ad spends, are about as likely to run a negative (albeit 100% accurate) segment about their Pharma paymasters as a feral cat is to give cuddling lessons. Instead, all day long, viewers are bombarded with flashy commercials pimping the “miracle” drug du jour that at best is inferior or ineffective and at worst, could be lethal. And if they turn out to be either of those things, do you think any major network is going to chop off the hand that feeds it?
Another confounding issue is that there’s an implied—if subliminal—endorsement when a major network runs a drug ad. If Sheepacil were dangerous or deadly, MSNBC wouldn’t promote it! That’s why they banned cigarette advertising on TV and radio more than fifty years ago! The media cares about us and has our best interests at heart. Katie Couric says so.
Relentless media messaging can also fuel the market for certain medications that may not be the safest or most effective treatment options. (Research has found that the majority of top-advertised drugs are of “low therapeutic value” compared with existing treatments. Oh, and many cost tens of thousands of dollars per year *not a typo*, because how else are they going to pay for all those ads?) The demand for pricier pharmaceuticals raises insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs for everyone—not just the customers using the top-shelf medications.
Alas, a certain controversial anti-vax conspiracy theorist we all know and love has ignited a media firestorm by suggesting that if when he becomes secretary of HHS, he’ll move to ban pharmaceutical advertising on TV. Seeing as the US is one of only two countries (G’day, New Zealand!) on the entire planet that allow this, you wouldn’t think this would be so contentious.
Unless, of course, you were Pharma—which spends about $5 billion a year in the US alone “sponsoring” shows from CBS Health Watch to Good Morning America and plugging their products on the small screen during every commercial break. What a generous expenditure, am I right? I mean, how can you “ask your doctor if Nobrainsatol is right for you” if you’ve never even heard of Nobrainsatol? And how else would you know that taking Nobrainsatol could cause rectal bleeding, delusions of piracy, excessive chin hair growth, and uncontrollable cravings for tuna casserole or that you shouldn’t take Nobrainsatol if you’re allergic to Nobrainsatol? Are you going to rely on your doctor to reveal the potential side effects and possible contraindications? Don’t make me laugh.
The plight—and the approach—of the snake oil salesman hasn’t changed in hundreds of years. When you’re hawking an inferior (or worthless, or deadly) elixir, one that has a ninja’s chance in a disco of catching on through reputation and recommendation, you’ve got no choice but to pay to put your messaging somewhere. And here’s what Bobby knows that the pill pushers wish he didn’t:
When you fund the media, you control it. Period. “The news ad spending from Pharma is a public relations lobbying tactic essentially to buy off the news,” healthcare advocate Calley Means told Tucker Carlson. “The news aren’t investigating Pharma; the news has become basically a referee that you are a terrible anti-science luddite for asking why the shots we require our kids to get—that fundamentally by their own advertising change the immune system of that child for life—have gone from 20 to 70. To even ask that question, the news referees that and calls you anti-science… when the two largest vaccine manufacturers in the country are literally criminal enterprises. GlaxoSmithKline and Merck—the two largest vaccine makers—in the past five years have settled two of the largest criminal penalties in American corporate history for bribing doctors and creating misleading research. When are we going to say, let’s go in another direction? Why are we trusting Pharma now?”
The legalized drug industry rag FiercePharma calls Kennedy’s proposed ban on direct-to-consumer (DTC) ads the “biggest imminent threat” of his [hopeful] HHS appointment hahahahaha ya think? They write:
In a report Sunday, research firm Intron Health suggested that such a ban represents a major risk of RFK Jr.’s (still to-be-confirmed) HHS leadership for the biopharma industry.
The analysts noted that because the return on investment for DTC drug ads is quite high—with “estimates ranging as high as 100%-500%, depending on the drug”—[pharmaceutical companies] will “almost certainly” see their drug sales take a hit from a DTC ban, even as they save money on marketing spending.
Look, FiercePharma. We all know those desperate drug peddlers will find ever-more-clever ways to spoon feed their messages to the masses. And certainly the relentless influencer marketing, bestowing of grants and donations, celebrity endorsements, sponsored content, “educational initiatives” *pauses to vomit, and underwriting of medical conferences, research studies, and health seminars will likely continue unabated. Whatever. If we can at least get their greedy tentacles out of our so-called news, it will be an astronomical leap in the right direction.
Would you trust a food critic’s review of a restaurant he had an ownership stake in? How confident would you be in nutrition studies funded by Coca-Cola or environmental contamination research bankrolled by Monsanto? It doesn’t take eagle vision to see that banning pharma advertising would be a major win for consumers of both medicine and media. What do you think?
One-time donations are also gratefully accepted (and help me justify the unholy amount of time I spend on these ‘stacks).
🎄🎄🎄 I hope all of my faithful readers had a memorable, marvelous, and otherwise magical holiday. This Christmas was one of my very favorites of all time (fun fact: most mamas are never happier than when the empty nest is full again, even if briefly). Italy was our big gift to ourselves, but I couldn’t resist the annual matching PJs tradition. Please enjoy our dorky family dance in coordinating cheetah sleepwear (and likely, be glad you’re not married to me).
Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnd ICYMI, here’s the original Nobraisatol post for ya, ya filthy followers:
Need to lose weight? Try Nobrainsatol!
Midlife can be a cruel, cruel mistress. Between the hot flashes, sleepless nights, and jeans that keep shrinking (without even putting them in the dryer; weird, right?), there are days I hardly recognize myself anymore. Fortunately, while I was perusing Amazon for
I'm glad to put this past year to bed. Actually all the years since, say, 2020. Next year promises to be a doozy, but at least we have a fighting chance. I'd say, get out the popcorn, but now that I'm reading Good Energy by Casey Means, I'm reevaluating. Anyhoo, whatever happens, JM will be making our sides split at the absurdity of it all. Instead of taking ridiculously named expensive and dangerous concoctions conjured up by the mad scientists of industry, we all know that laughter is the best medicine. So here's to you, Jenna, one of the best things to come out of all of this madness. A spoonful of Jenna makes the medicine of truth go down! Ask yourself (not your clueless doctor) if Jenna McCarthy is right for you.
Let me say up front that I literally record everything I watch from television. So, I’m either watching something that is streaming where I can usually fast forward through the stupid commercials (except for a lot stuff on Prime, so I just mute that stupidity), or I’m watching something recorded, thus eliminating the pestiferous and irritating commercials.
However, the other day during a football game I was in the kitchen making lunch or something and the commercial break began, and I was out of reach to FF through it immediately. So, in the background, I’m hearing an ad for something called “Pluvicto,” conveniently and expensively provided by Novartis, whoever that is. Turns out that this is a drug for prostate cancer, and there’s no making light of anything to do with cancer.
But as I listened to this ad in the background, I became highly aware of the multitude of warnings and side effects of this wonder drug. The announcer, in his best pleasant voicing, went on and on and on, and I became interested in just how many of these there were.
So, I came back to the TV, rewound the recording to the beginning of the ad and began to write down the seemingly never-ending list of things that could or might go wrong with the wonder drug, Pluvicto. So, here’s the entire list of warnings and possible side effects:
• Contact with radioactivity (which may increase the risk for cancer and cause fetal harm)
• You should drink plenty of fluids
• May cause a man to urinate often
• You should use contraception
• Exposing others to harmful radiation during and after treatment
• Could cause low levels of blood cell counts
• Kidney problems
• Infertility
• You may experience weakness, pale skin, shortness of breath, bleeding or bruising more easily, an infection and changes in urination
Side effects include all the following:
• Tiredness
• Dry mouth
• Nausea, appetite loss
• Constipation
And one final caveat at the end of the commercial: “These are not all the risks of Pluvicto.”
Holy smokes! All of the above and that’s not even all of the risks?! Wow, why wouldn’t you want to go into deep debt when this is all you have to be concerned about?
As I thought about just how many warnings were issued with this wonder drug, I wondered just how much of the commercial time it took to say all of this. This was a 60-second commercial, and the warnings and side effects took 27 of those seconds. A full 45% of the entire commercial time is spent explaining not even all the things that could go wrong when you are taking this drug. And this is just one example of hundreds that are out there from Big Pharma, all for your better health!