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As we start October, one is reminded of the tenth month not by falling temperatures or early sunsets, but by pink products bombarding us at every turn. The start of the largest annual medical awareness campaign is a time for us to stop, pause, and think about the ramifications and true intentions behind this and other awareness events. Sometimes, medical awareness campaigns can be a prime example of disease marketing--that is, they are sometimes launched for the purpose of creating demand for pharmaceutical products.
Lainie Liberti of the jungle8 blog explains further:
By promoting “disease-awareness” campaigns our trust-worthy drug manufacturers have since changed the public perception of what is normal, what is dis-ease. Suddenly, mild conditions are now a serious illness, worthy of it’s own medication. Billboards, tv, magazines invade insidiously the public subconscious and saturate consciousness with an infinite number of barbaric names that will blossom in the American medicine cabinet across the mighty landscape of the land of the free.
Suddenly, a benign condition has ferociously launched into, “If you have…” suddenly carry a FRIGHTENING dimension. “You may be at RISK for…” a curable DISEASE, obviously! They create fears about conditions to draw the attention to the latest treatment!
Sadly, this distribution of misinformation isn't limited to human patients, either. Dogged Blog author Christie Keith tells of her own experience with disease marketing:
So, after the obligatory advice to ask your veterinarian (or, as I'm sure Fort Dodge thinks of them, their marketing partners) "about a vaccination program that includes protection against enteritis-causing pathogens such as parvovirus, coronavirus, and Giardia," we get to the footnotes.
Now, you'd think for something I've never heard of before, this newly discovered trifecta of canine intestinal doom, we'd have some pretty cutting edge science. They must surely cite some new studies, hot off the presses, for me to not have seen them before. Right?
Wrong. Because those footnotes cite one study that is 19 years old, and another that is 25 years old.
No, dear dog lovers, the diseases are old, the citations are old, even the vaccines being promoted are old. The only thing new is the marketing campaign.
Furthermore, there is an excellent documentary, "Big Bucks, Big Pharma," that is available on YouTube (abbreviated version) and Google (full version--1.2 hours). The Manic Ramblings of a Swede provides this synopsis:
Big Bucks, Big Pharma pulls back the curtain on the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry to expose the insidious ways that illness is used, manipulated, and in some instances created, for capital gain. Focusing on the industry’s marketing practices, media scholars and health professionals help viewers understand the ways in which direct-to-consumer (DTC) pharmaceutical advertising glamorizes and normalizes the use of prescription medication, and works in tandem with promotion to doctors. Combined, these industry practices shape how both patients and doctors understand and relate to disease and treatment. Ultimately, Big Bucks, Big Pharma challenges us to ask important questions about the consequences of relying on a for-profit industry for our health and well-being.
Stay tuned for more information throughout October about disease marketing, its evil twin cause marketing, and the Pink Ribbon Machine.
