Daily Archives: January 24, 2008

Pharma outstanding in its field? Not!

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This whole pharmaceutical advertising thing is driving me crazy. Pharma ads today read like investor relations documents: they contain thousands of words, are dense, unintelligible, full of obfuscation and blather. Has anyone other than a lawyer and proofreader really ever read one of these print ads stem to stern(um?)

 
Today Merck issued it a counterpoint ad telling readers not to believe a recent study questioning the combined efficacy of cholesterol drugs Zetia and Vytorin. Give it a read, if you have an extra hour. 
 
I’m old school. I want my doctor to proscribe medicine and to know about and believe in that medicine. I don’t want to make the decision after having read 10,000 words of gibberish, that includes a side effect, such as “in rare cases, your Homer Simpson might turn green.”
 
When we have socialized medicine, I certainly don’t want competition to diminish – a serious possibility — but reducing all of the spending on direct to consumer pharma ads should cut about 25% of the cost.  Sometimes, it seems, too much competition isn’t good.