Commercial Hysteria
Last week, a 53 y/o woman came in concerned she had heart failure. She is healthy and doesn’t run in for every little thing, but she had gone to the hospital for severe left arm pain and dizziness. They kept her overnight and did a nuclear stress test.
She was released after the test was normal, but she was still worried she had heart failure because she had carpal tunnel syndrome—she said she saw it on TV. I couldn’t figure out how she got from point A to point B, but I reassured her that her heart test was good and carpal tunnel is very common—it doesn’t mean you have heart failure.
The next day I saw it. It’s a new Pfizer ad campaign for ATTR-CM. Don’t feel bad—I had to look it up too. ATTR-CM is a form of Amyloid Cardiomyopathy. Pfizer has a new drug for this rare disease and they need to sell it.
The idea for the commercial is benevolent enough—it raises awareness of an overlooked disease. But in the real world, the message that patients hear is different. If you’re only half paying attention to the TV in the first place, it’s easy to think they said that if you have carpal tunnel and back pain, you might have heart failure.
Patients often ask about treatments that are advertised, so I have to keep up. For example, there’s the ad for Watchman—an umbrella closure device that seals off the left atrial appendage and prevent clots from forming in A Fib. In that ad, a distressed woman is shown driving her father to hospital because he fell and was bleeding from the scalp. The helpful ER doc recommends Watchman.
Then, there’s the Inspire ad that features a support group of sleep apnea patients who, for an unknown reason, attend the meeting wearing their masks and using their machines during the day. Our hero arrives without a mask and tells the attendees about his new device that works “with just a click of this button,” as he holds up a small remote control. “No mask. No hose. Just sleep.” What they forget to mention is that the device is implanted in the body like a pacemaker. A small impulse generator is implanted beneath the clavicle, a tunneled breathing sensing lead is placed between the external and intercostal muscles, and a tunneled stimulation lead is attached to the hypoglossal nerve. Hmm. I think I would rather use a mask.
And don’t get me started on the ads for supplements. I’ve seen so many ads for Prevagen, Balance of Nature, Relief Factor, and Relaxium that some days I think I should try them. When you boil it down, though, nothing much has changed. Ads like these have existed as long as there has been advertising and medicine.
Dr. Osler, in his 1889 talk Aequanimitas, lamented patients’ use of a vegetable concoction named Warner’s Safe Cure. (Interestingly, the word ‘safe’ came from the lockboxes that Warner made before he got into the patent medicine business.)
For a catchy musical take on promoting meds in the 1950’s, watch this ad for Vitajex in the movie A Face in the Crowd with Andy Griffith in the lead role.
Over the years, I’ve developed a stock response when patients ask about the latest stuff promoted in the media. I tell them that when I was a small boy and I asked my mother to buy me a toy I saw on TV, she would say, “That toy’s no good. They don’t have to advertise the good toys.”
Well gotta admit the vitajex ad is way more entertaining than those ads featuring smiling people on drugs that cost the equivalent of a small country’s budget….
Yes ,Viagra might be better,since it is being used with some success in Dementia and Alzheimers.. Better than anything else at present..
Yes works in Women too..
Agree!
Went to the pharmacy to get my Covid booster yesterday. They had Covagen on the counter-ready to recommend to patients for memory loss. I asked them why they are promoting it as from what I read over a number of years, it does little in studies to help those in need of what they intimate it can significantly help. He said -“It can’t hurt”. At $41.00 a bottle I guess not.