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Plot Twist: Cheesy Soap Opera Script is Deceptive Drug Ad, Doctors Warn

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

"exec" writes:

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) by a-zA-Z0-9$_.+!*'(),- on Thursday May 25 2017, @03:02AM (1 child)

    by a-zA-Z0-9$_.+!*'(),- (3868) on Thursday May 25 2017, @03:02AM (#515259)

    they were designed to sell soap?

    What really gets me is how paid content - like HBO - has the gall to require you to pay for their service/programs (e.g. The Sopranos) and then embeds dozens of product placements in it - which don't even agree with the earlier shows (i.e. they suddenly find scarfing down Entemann's cake to be as good as the local Italian bakery). When I want to pay for the privilege of being advertised to, I'll sign up for pay television.

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  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday May 25 2017, @03:04PM

    by FatPhil (863) <{pc-soylent} {at} {asdf.fi}> on Thursday May 25 2017, @03:04PM (#515489) Homepage
    Yes and no - the selling of soap was because there were soap adverts blocked for that time of day on that channel. So the intention you indicate was there, get the housewives listening to dross and sell them household consumables, it's just that it wasn't direct product placement. I'm sure the modern media are worse. For more information, just bing it.
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