Many people think that laughter is really the only sensible reaction to the advertising excesses of the drug industry. Check out this site:
http://www.havidol.com/
An article in BMJ explains that this site is the brainchild of Australian artist Justine Cooper. What's scary, however, is that it has apparently been mistaken for a serious pharmaceutical website by many users and cross-listed on websites dealing with anxiety and depression. (The drug Havidol purports to treat the dread disease "DSACDAD" or "dysphoric social attention consumption deficit anxiety disorder", and of course the website features the obligatory quiz to tell you if you have this disease and so can qualify for taking Havidol for the rest of your life.)
Coombes R. Having the last laugh at big pharma. BMJ 334:396-97, 2007.
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All these DTC ads are pushing new drugs when the old drugs or the generics are much, much less expensive. I’ve seen ads on TV for Caduet. It has two ingredients. One is Amlodipine and the other is Atorvastatin. With my RxDrugCard I can get 30 tablets of Amlodipine for $9 and 30 tablets of Simvastatin for $9. I’ll bet they are charging more than $18 for this new drug! The unthinking public is going to pressure their doctors into giving them something just because it’s new, when something old or generic would do the job for cheaper.
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