This year on General Hospital, central character Anna Devane is stricken with a rare and life-threatening type of blood cancer. Gasp! OK, this may not be shocking; dramatic, unlikely, and always tragic events are the norm on soap operas. But this one is a little different.
Prior to the tear-jerking diagnosis, the ABC daytime drama—the longest running soap opera in the US—made a deal with a pharmaceutical company to come up with her fate. And the company, Incyte Corporation, just so happens to make the only targeted therapy for fictional Anna's very real form of cancer. This did not sit well with two doctors.
In an opinion piece published this week in JAMA, Sham Mailankody of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Vinay Prasad of Oregon Health & Science University systematically question the intent of the promotion. The piece ends with a call to arms to medical policy makers and regulators to try to stamp out these "creative" promotions.
These promotions have "tangible effects on health care behavior and can lead to unintended consequences, including wasteful diagnostic testing, overdiagnosis, and inappropriate therapy," the pair argue. "The status quo appears increasingly untenable: direct-to-consumer advertising is a massive medical intervention with unproven public health benefit, dubious plausibility, and suggestive evidence of harm."
Source: Ars Technica
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(Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday May 24 2017, @10:18PM (1 child)
It's curious how womens' magazines use the same color-schemes in their articles as they do in their drug ads contained within.
But drug ads aren't limited to women -- watch an NFL game and you'll see plenty of hilarious shit, such as a prescription for restless leg syndrome with side effects such as mood swings, suicidal thoughts, paralysis, and death.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @03:08PM
God how I HATE when I get half-way through an article only to figure out that it was an ad all this time.
TIME is pretty good about not doing this, but it does get me every once in a while.
Yes, I know it say ADVERTIZEMENT at the top of the page, but if you aren't looking for it, it is easy to miss.