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
(Score: 1) by arcz on Wednesday May 24 2017, @10:17PM (6 children)
Professional speech restrictions are ready to go the way of the dinosaur. Cry foul all you want, but this is a perfect vehicle for the Supreme Court to do away with them once and for all.
It's time for us to recognize that advertising is still speech.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Wednesday May 24 2017, @11:37PM (4 children)
I'll bite ... I know who's gonna violently disagree already.
Pretty much every non-US social agreement includes restrictions on the freedom of speech (the US also does, though they are the smallest I'm aware of).
Besides enforcing a certain form of polite cohabitation between people of various opinions, those restrictions do try to prevent harmful speech, where "harmful" can either be in the eye of the beholder, or in some cases a clear scientifically established fact...
In the era of polarized politics, the Internet, and mass under-employment, absolute free speech , while desirable, is proving to be too powerful for us silly humans to handle safely and keep living together.
Some regulars like to repeat their mantra that an armed society is a polite society, but Americans shoot each other more than any other "advanced" country on the planet. Unrestricted free speech is wonderful against government oppression, but for citizen against each other, it's turning into the equivalent of people riding around with tactical nukes.
Feel free to constructively disagree.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 24 2017, @11:57PM (2 children)
The vast majority of which are simply insane. Also, the US is only a bit better by comparison; it's still terrible when it comes to free speech. The US has obscenity laws, arrests people over bomb jokes, and still has things like FCC censorship. A lot of these restrictions restrict sexual content in certain contexts, which I hope you could agree is simply insane.
What, specifically, are you referring to here?
There is no justification for restricting speech based on "harm" that is entirely in the eye of the beholder.
In this case, any free speech restrictions would be designed to prevent incredibly unintelligent people who apparently believe everything they hear in soap operas and elsewhere from forming undesirable conclusions. I don't see how that's justifiable, since it's their problem for taking fiction so seriously.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday May 25 2017, @12:23AM (1 child)
While deplorable in many aspects. The basis seems to be sound. A lot of countries have various insane restrictions. A lot of important issues are not about sex or bomb jokes. But about the state of a country etc.
It may spill over onto other people that do make intelligent decisions as the effect of the actions of less smart people may have on others. Let them have spam for Las Vegas gaming etc.. less harmful.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @07:25AM
Sound? Restricting people's fundamental right to free speech simply because you're offended by something is not "sound".
What does that even mean? You're not making any sense. Are you saying that because sex and bomb jokes aren't "important" to you, that protecting those forms of free speech is therefore not very important? What you find "important" or not is subjective. All free speech is necessarily important to people who care about freedom and principles. If you disagree, then you don't really care about free speech at all, but instead care about speech pertaining to subjects you personally approve of.
In the US, such restrictions are 100% unconstitutional, so that's another reason to care about it.
Sounds like the problem is still that people believe whatever they hear. You're not even actually fixing the underlying problem by restricting speech; instead, you're only hiding it in a specific context.
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Thursday May 25 2017, @05:16PM
I will take you up on this.
"is proving to be too powerful for us silly humans to handle safely and keep living together."
Do the words, "He who would trade a little liberty for a little security deserves neither and will lose both" mean anything to you?
Also do the words, "Give me Liberty or give me death." have any meaning to you?
Because those were words that the United States was founded on - such an experiment like the world has never seen - which has, perhaps in your mind coincidentally - generally advanced the state of the world beyond what any other country has ever individually done. I would argue that it is not coincidence. Our Constitution maintains its position as the longest-standing continuous system of governance of any advanced nation. I would argue that this is also not coincidence.
So, should you be of the belief that a diversity of ideas and peoples results in the most successful projects, I would then wonder about the opinion you state here, which is that the United States should be more like other countries which already exist, which already make their contributions, and which already push the "social experiment" of differing societies in those other directions - in search of the optimal one.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @08:00AM
So, where would you draw the line then? Is lying about your product allowed speech? Is emotional manipulation allowed speech? Is chemical manipulation allowed speech? Is subliminal messaging allowed speech? Is blackmail allowed speech? Is bartering at gunpoint allowed speech? Should ammunition be the new national currency?
(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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 24 2017, @10:47PM
Nothing new really.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Snotnose on Wednesday May 24 2017, @10:56PM (2 children)
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.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @12:01AM (1 child)
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
Sounds as competent as the cook on the Muppet show.. di do dooodoiid diid.ah SURGERY! ;-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 24 2017, @11:26PM
Another good reason to not waste attention or time on TV which just spews out the lowest common denominator junk. And if there is anything important to send, well then vested interests will censor it into a grey bland goo and what remains is a worthless waste of RF spectrum at best.
The question becomes how to deter others from seeing the shit and acting on it. Or not act..
(Score: 5, Informative) by jimbrooking on Wednesday May 24 2017, @11:30PM (4 children)
Last I heard, the USA and New Zealand are the only countries in the world that allow the advertising of prescription pharmaceuticals. I don't know what the Kiwis' problem is, but here in the USA our form of government has morphed into corporatocracy, for, by, and of corporate beneficiaries. The humans who live here have one duty: buy stuff. "Corporate personhood" says they can say anything they like, under the protection of free speech, to encourage the humans to buy THEIR stuff. Get used to it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday May 25 2017, @12:24AM
You are right about New Zealand being the only other place that allows drug ads on TV. As far as I can remember, it was because the pay TV company (Sky, mostly owned by that notorious pantomime villain Rupert Murdoch) saw an opportunity, and the Government is always keen on keeping the Media happy.
The other TV companies also saw dollars signs and it was sold to us as something that gave us "choice".
(Score: 2) by a-zA-Z0-9$_.+!*'(),- on Thursday May 25 2017, @03:05AM (2 children)
Big Pharma is an evil drug lobby, easily as responsible for the opiate epidemic as the corrupt doctors who (over)prescribe them and other addictive drugs.
Where is the "war on drugs" when you need it?
https://newrepublic.com/article/114112/anonymouth-linguistic-tool-might-have-helped-jk-rowling
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @07:27AM (1 child)
We don't need the war on drugs. Not for opiates, and not for other drugs. Imprisoning everyone just tends to make things worse.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @04:36PM
Not everybody, but a lot of C-level pharma company officers wouldn't hurt, same for bankers.
Not that I actually think a plutocracy would lock up its rulers.
(Score: 2) by a-zA-Z0-9$_.+!*'(),- on Thursday May 25 2017, @03:02AM (1 child)
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.
https://newrepublic.com/article/114112/anonymouth-linguistic-tool-might-have-helped-jk-rowling
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday May 25 2017, @03:04PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @10:43AM
Probably all media, but western media in particular is saturated with propaganda and advertising. Really badly saturated. Every cop show is basically pro-police state, and so many hit minor talking points to legitimize a specific viewpoint. It is disgusting.