NaturalPedia > Drug Commercials

Quotes about Drug Commercials from the world's top natural health / natural living authors

 Email this page to a friend   |  Click here for FREE email alerts

"Americans are eager to believe in the panaceas offered in the six drug commercials that regularly accompany each evening's news. We are told—and want to believe—that we can swallow a pill and soon be dancing on a dinner cruise, running on the beach, or playing football like John Elway, the former NFL quarterback and promoter of Prevacid, a heartburn pill. If we eat too many cheeseburgers and fries, there is comfort knowing one pill will settle our stomachs while another brings our cholesterol back down." - Melody Petersen, Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs (Get the book.) "Omnicom and the other ad agencies had grown rich from a new stream of advertising revenue, one worth millions of dollars a year, when the FDA decided in 1997 to allow prescription drug commercials on television. At the same time, the pharmaceutical industry had been paying the ad firms to ghostwrite publications, to organize dinners and meetings for physicians, to create medical education courses, and for public relations work they called "managing the media." Now the ad firms were expanding their services to include scientific research and clinical drug trials." - Melody Petersen, Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs (Get the book.)

"For example, the agency reviews only a small percentage of the drug commercials that air on television. The FDA says, quite rightly, it doesn't have the resources to review the 54,000 drug promotions a year that come its way.40 The FDA's drug-marketing enforcement arm has only forty employees.41 Ads do not have to be reviewed and approved before they are aired. "A company could blanket the airwaves with ads for forty-five days before the FDA finishes its review." - Charles Barber, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation (Get the book.)

"I believe that many doctors are totally unaware of the serious implications associated with many of the drugs they prescribe daily. The drug commercials imply that your doctor will know if you should be using their particular drug, and that he is basically an authority with all the answers. They then focus on convincing your doctor that many patients could benefit from their drug (even for unapproved uses). There are more drugs being continually added, and many are just variations of the same basic class of drug." - Dr. David W. Tanton; Ph.D., A Drug-Free Approach To Healthcare, Revised Edition (Get the book.)

"If they were, I probably would have just gotten a prescription for one and gone on my way with that happy smile just like the actors in today's TV drug commercials. (We'll talk more about the damage that "ignorance is bliss" smile can do later.) After a while I gave up on finding a medical solution, stopped trying various locker-room remedies, and began doing serious research. I bought stacks of books and researched libraries for information. Unfortunately, the Internet wasn't much of a resource back then." - James Occhiogrosso, N. D., Your Prostate, Your Libido, Your Life (Get the book.)

"Ask your doctor" drug commercials started flooding the public airwaves in 1997. That year the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) changed the rules for broadcast advertising, no longer requiring full information about side effects (which had previously made it problematic for drug companies to run a thirty-second spot). It was a great victory for Big Pharma, which was well aware of studies showing that the majority of physicians are likely to comply with requests for drugs from patients who have seen media advertisements." - Bruce E. Levine, Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy (Get the book.)

"Sensible solutions to heartburn You may have seen those drug commercials that say heartburn can have serious long-term complications. That's not just a sales ploy. Acid indigestion over time can cause bleeding and ulcers in your esophagus, a precancerous condition called Barrett's esophagus, and even asthma. But you don't need medicines to prevent these complications. A natural mix of healthy foods and eating habits will set you on your way to heartburn-free living." - The Editors of FC&A, Unleash the Inner Healing Power of Foods (Get the book.)

"DRUG PRICES Whether or not prescription drug commercials on television actually increase the cost of the medicines, they certainly help these pricey pills sell. Americans are paying more than ever for their medications. We have been tracking prices for 30 years. As you look at the following table, you may be astonished to see that between 1975 and 1985 the cost of some popular prescriptions rose very little. But starting in the 1990s, prices took off. They've been climbing ever since. PRICE INCREASES OF POPULAR DRUGS DRUG* 1975 1985 1995 2005 Coumadin (10 mg) $9.40 $13.85 $86." - Joe Graedon, M.S. and Teresa Graedon, Ph.D., Best Choices From the People's Pharmacy (Get the book.)

FAIR USE NOTICE: The research quoted here is provided under the protection of Fair Use provisions and published by the 501(c)3 non-profit Consumer Wellness Center for the purposes of public comment and education. Authors / publishers may submit books for consideration of inclusion here.

TERMS OF USE: Read full terms of use. Citations of text from NaturalPedia must include: 1) Full credit to the original author and book title. 2) Secondary credit to the Natural News Naturalpedia as a research resource and a link to www.NaturalPedia.com

This unique compilation of research is copyright (c) 2008, 2009 by the non-profit Consumer Wellness Center.

ABOUT THE CREATOR OF NATURALPEDIA: Mike Adams, the creator of NaturalPedia, is the editor of NaturalNews.com, the internet's top natural health news site, creator of the Honest Food Guide (www.HonestFoodGuide.org), a free downloadable consumer food guide based on natural health principles, author of Grocery Warning, The 7 Laws of Nutrition, Natural Health Solutions, and many other books available at www.TruthPublishing.com, creator of the earth-friendly EcoLEDs company (www.EcoLEDs.com) that manufactures energy-efficient LED lighting products, founder of Arial Software (www.ArialSoftware.com), a permission e-mail technology company, creator of the CounterThink Cartoon series (www.NaturalNews.com/index-cartoons.html) and author of over 1,500 articles, interviews, special reports and reference guides available at www.NaturalNews.com. Adams' personal philosophy and health statistics are available at www.HealthRanger.org.