It's getting so you can't watch TV without seeing a commercial for a medication that you're supposed to ask your doctor about. Apparently, the pharmaceutical companies think my doctor and I spend a lot of time just jawing about the latest developments at Pfizer, Merck and Novo Nordisk. It seems they also believe the typical doctor is so inept that his choice of medications is determined by the commercials his patients have seen.
"Doctor, while I'm here I want to ask you about a new medicine I saw advertised that I'd like to try. I don't remember the name of it, but it's the one used by the lady in red at the dance studio."
"Do you mean the lady who buys the old turntable and dances with her son?"
"No, no. I mean the one who goes out to lunch with the handsome dance instructor and one of the other students after class."
"Oh yes, I know that med. I believe it's called Cybilwantstotango. Let me see if I can fix you up with some. You know, Russ, if someone had told me twenty years ago that 90% of the job was going to be just prescribing the meds that my patients would see advertised on TV, I wouldn't have been so stressed out in Med School."
I wonder if these pharma companies have any statistical evidence that advertising directly to patients actually results in more sales. They have so much money to play with, I suspect that when company A (let's call it AstraZeneca) saw that company B (Bristol Myers Squibb) had hop-scotched over the medical journals to target the Wheel of Fortune viewers directly, the CEO at AstraZeneca decided to get in on the action.
"Right away, Mr. Zeneca."
"This is R&D, Bob Davidson speaking."
"Hello. Davidson? Zeneca here. What do we have in the works that helps people dance the Tango?"
