Bad Medicine

"MODERN TIMES"

BAD MEDICINE

Lloyd Garver

When I was growing up, there were ads for over-the-counter medicines. We had "Speedy Alka Seltzer" and "Excedrin Headache No. 63." For some time, there have been ads for cosmetic surgery in the back of women's magazines. (They are usually just a few pages away from the articles that encourage women to accept their bodies as they are). But it's only recently that we've actually had commercials for doctors' services and for prescription medicines. Now, it's almost impossible to watch your favorite television show without hearing about some disease you'd rather not think about. And then they tell us about the possible side effects, which usually sound worse than the disease.

That might be the one positive "side effect" of all this: after hearing about all the scary possibilities, maybe people will become so afraid that they'll take fewer and fewer medicines. One commercial warns that pregnant women should not even touch the pills that they are trying to sell to the rest of us. I don't know about you, but if this stuff is so potent that just touching it could hurt a pregnant woman, I don't even want it in my neighborhood, let alone in my medicine cabinet.

And then there are the ironic side effects. There is the stomach medicine that might make you nauseated and the allergy medicine that might give you a runny nose. Some of the possible side effects of an anxiety medication include tremors, chills, and paralysis. If you weren't anxious before you started taking the medicine, wait till you get those side effects. And I actually saw a commercial for a sleeping pill that warned, "might cause drowsiness."

Another troubling aspect of this is that the people doing the voice-overs for the commercials are the same actors who do other commercials. So, the guy who's telling me to get a certain kind of heart medicine was telling me to get a new paint job for my car just a half-hour ago. I have a credibility problem with that, so I probably won't get the medicine or the paint job.

Medical advertising doesn't make sense to me. I can't imagine choosing a medicine just because Bob Dole or Mike Piazza uses it. I'm not going to pick a doctor just because he has a good commercial. There are radio ads for laser eye surgery. Who would choose someone to operate on his or her eyes - yes, their precious eyes -- based on a radio commercial?

But I guess I'm wrong. The commercials must be working, or else the drug companies wouldn't be paying for them. They wouldn't be putting commercials on the air just to entertain us with happy people in pretty locations. Although, there are those general pharmaceutical company commercials that imply that the main reason these companies are in business is to help the world be a better place. But that's a pill I just can't swallow.

So far, I'm having no trouble resisting the media influencing my medical choices even though these ads are getting more and more pervasive. I saw a startling billboard as I was driving across the country with my son this past summer. We were in the middle of very rural Wyoming when I saw a sign that read, "Vasectomy Reversal Surgery" followed by an 800 number. Putting aside why this specific surgery was being advertised, this billboard just seemed over the line to me. Maybe I'm just being stubborn, but there's no way I'm going to use the same kind of resource for choosing a surgeon as I do for selecting a place to get a piece of pie.