BIG PHARMA NETWORK NEWS!

Did I miss something? Were the network news programs on ABC-CBS-NBC sold to Big Pharma and are now 1/2 hour drug Infomercials with a splatting of actual news now and then?

No matter what half-hour network news channel you flip to you will be bombarded with somewhere around 15 minutes of "ask your doctor" Big Pharma ads touting some new and improved excelsior to treat anything from and overactive bladder to a runaway leg. About 10 seconds of each ad is devoted to "side effects" up to, and including death! Guaranteed to solve any bladder or leg problem for good.

What would Cronkite or Murrow have to say if they were still with us? probably nothing because they would not be hired by the networks.

If you try to find an explanation to this transition from news to drugs you have to go back a few years and dig into obscure reports that very few of us would read.

I was able to find something in an article written in 2008 that stated;

Advertising in the Pharmaceutical Industry: An Overview

Open a copy of Reader’s Digest, or simply turn on the TV:

American consumers are bombarded by advertising from the

pharmaceutical industry. “Big Pharma,” the most profitable

industry in America, spent $4.2 billion in 2005 on DTC

advertising.3 It also spent about 35% of its revenues on marketing

and administration in 2001, an extremely high percentage

for any industry.4 Most of this money was spent by

companies trying to attract patients to use their drugs.

Pharma markets to consumers in many ways, including

print ads and TV commercials. It also markets by investing

in relationships: sponsoring research by doctors, inviting

physicians as members of advisory boards or speakers’

bureaus, giving donations or funding trips, and holding symposia.

In 2000, the ten largest pharmaceutical companies

spent $1.9 billion on promotional events alone.5 Free product

samples also help sway doctors to prescribe a particular medicine.

In her book The Truth About the Drug Companies, Dr.

Marcia Angell reports that in 2001, drug companies spent

$5.5 billion to promote nearly $11 billion worth of free samples

to physicians; and in 2005, pharma spent $7.2 billion

promoting drugs to physicians.6

YOU MIGHT WANT TO READ THIS AND 

ASK YOUR DOCTOR ABOUT IT ON YOUR NEXT VISIT.