#240 Wonder Drugs

You can’t watch TV these days without being hit by a barrage of ads for the new wonder drugs. I call them that, because after I see an ad for one of them I always say, I wonder... My wonder usually centers on the side effects issue. You take a drug for heartburn and it causes bloating and diarrhea. Just moving the problem down the line, if you ask me. You give a kid Ritalin, which is essentially an amphetamine, to slow him down. Then you arrest his father for cooking up meth. Ritalin is the Big Brother of our little post-1984. Forget about spying on each other, to keep us in line our brave new world has drugs. Big Brother is Smith Glaxo-Kline or maybe Merck. Which one makes Soma? The other night I saw ads for three different cholesterol-lowering drugs in a row. They all purported to help lower your cholesterol, both the inherited kind and the dietary kind. They all compared themselves to the established brand Lipitor. Whose name always sounded like some kind of piercing to me: “Hey dude, nice lipitor.” “Thanks man, you should see my Prince Albert.” Anyhow, the new cholesterol drug commercials were very careful to express concern that you should also make healthy lifestyle choices, like dieting and exercise, and promoted their products as cholesterol-lowering assistants not one-pill-shopping cures. Interesting. Are the new wonder drugs so much less potent that they’re spending beaucoup advertising dollars just to give you some wimpy help? Well, it’s not really a wonder drug, it’s more of a beats-a-jab-in-the-eye-with-a-sharp-stick drug.
Last time I watch TV between five and six on a Sunday. Must be the geriatric hour. All I saw were cholesterol drugs and insomnia drugs. Sure enough, I flipped the channels around and what was on but Lawrence Welk? The perfect TV to digest by, when you come back from the early bird special. Speaking of insomnia drugs, I like the one with the butterflies and not the one with the Z’s floating around. I want to dream of butterflies and not letters. I got too many letters in my waking life. Then this prostate-shrinking drug ad came on. A delicate advertising challenge. Do an ad about a drug targeted at older people who aren’t comfortable talking about sex organs and accouterments. They pulled it off until they got to the side effects. Seems this drug Avodart shrinks your prostate by may enlarge your breasts. Oh well. After all the controversy about heart attacks with post-menopausal women, I suppose they needed to find a market for all of that stockpiled estrogen somewhere. Just then another ad comes on: “Hey Ted nice rack.” “Thanks Ed, this place serves the best ribs in the state...” It was for one of those BBQ chains and their early bird special. Wonder if they put Geritol in their sauce...
America, ya gotta love it.