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posted by on Wednesday May 24 2017, @09:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the almost-like-advertising-is-the-raison-d'être dept.

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

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Snotnose on Wednesday May 24 2017, @10:56PM (2 children)

    by Snotnose (1623) on Wednesday May 24 2017, @10:56PM (#515173)

    What, me, fat flabby software engineer who thinks antibiotics are the fix for the common cold, is gonna tell my doctor what drug to prescribe me? Really?

    And I'm better edumacated and more intelligent than most of the idiots who see/read these commercials.

    --
    Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @12:01AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @12:01AM (#515206)

    My doctor gave me a prescription for something that would've had the opposite effect of what he wanted. After arguing with him he finally looked it up in the PDR and found I was correct. Another doctor kept changing his diagnosis from "needing major spine surgery" to "I see nothing wrong". I got second and third opinions. Don't trust them if you think it's wrong.

    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday May 25 2017, @12:26AM

      by kaszz (4211) on Thursday May 25 2017, @12:26AM (#515220) Journal

      Sounds as competent as the cook on the Muppet show.. di do dooodoiid diid.ah SURGERY! ;-)