You can tell who watches a given TV show by the advertising on it. Apparently the shows I watch, especially news, are frequented by people of a certain age because a high percentage of the ads are for nostrums to treat one repulsive disease after another.
The more of these pitches you watch, the sillier they seem. They follow a reliable pattern. Miserable looking suffers are told the cure is at hand for their ugly rashes, intestinal disorders and the like. Actors playing creaky seniors are suddenly chipper thanks to using whatever miracle drug the ad is pitching, upbeat music plays, and all is right with the world.
Unfortunately, however, there’s a bit of hitch. While the cheerful cured are grinning and acting young at heart, a voiceover is reciting a long list of disclaimers. They warn you of possible side effects and remind you to tell your doctor if you have some pre-existing condition or alarming symptom that may make the drug contra-indicated.
Obviously, this boilerplate is dictated by teams of lawyers representing the pharmaceutical companies, the better to give the pill pushers an out when poisoned patients or their heirs try to sue them in court for deadly side effects. The logic is that the drug makers aren’t to blame since the patients were warned and could have reminded the prescribing doctor that the stuff he’s pushing is poison.
I admit I find many of these ads terrifying. Once I hear a long list of risky side effects, I wouldn’t want to ingest such a pill. Rinvoc is prescribed for some sort of intestinal unpleasantness, but the fine print warns that incidentally it might just cause you to get tuberculosis, infections, blood clots and cancer. Oh well, that’s life. There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
My doctor told me I should try a dose of something supposedly good for arthritic joint pain. Swell, I thought, until I read the fine print. It might slightly ease my pain, but the downside included the risk of liver failure, high blood pressure, heart failure, anemia, and kidney damage. I decided to stick with the aches and pains and never opened the pin bottle.
Singulair is sold to treat asthma, hives, and hay fever, but taking it might give the patient a galaxy of new symptoms including numbness and pain of the arms and legs, sinus pain, muscle weakness, uncontrolled muscle movements, stuttering, rash, itching, swelling of the face or tongue, dizziness, trouble breathing, and abdominal pain. Sounds great.
And the hits just keep on coming. According to the cheerful jingle in ads for Skyrizi it’ll make your skin, rendered repulsive by plaque psoriasis, nifty again. However, it can also cause falling, dizziness, low blood pressure, swelling of face, lips, tongue and throat, skin rash, hives, itching, reduced ability to fight infections, diarrhea, muscle aches and so on.
On top of all such nightmarish warnings of grim side effects, the ads frequently admonish patients to be sure to tell their doctor that they may be at risk from the medicine being prescribed if they have a history of certain diseases that the meds might interact badly with. For example, some of the ads say: “Tell your doctor if you’ve had a heart attack or stroke or cancer.”
This is clearly one more case of the pharma folks making sure they don’t get blamed for poisoning their patients, but before he starts prescribing these pills, shouldn’t my doctor know whether I’ve had a stroke or cancer and that these drugs are contra-indicated in my case?
It begins to look like both the doctors and the pharmaceutical companies are delegating to me concern about whether the treatment I’m getting is deadly to me. But since when is it the job of the feeble, old patient to protect himself from the medical-industrial complex he’s counting on to keep him healthy? Frankly, it’s enough to make you sick, if you aren’t already sick.