Drugs are a Dime a Dozen…

Drugs are a Dime a Dozen…

by Amy LaCroix

We’ve all seen them, one TV advertisement after another for newly available drugs for every “syndrome” and “disorder” imaginable, ranging from ‘Restless Leg Syndrome’ to ‘Idiopathic Short Stature Disorder’. Nowadays, flipping on the television is becoming less and less about the entertainment and more of a review of what hot new medications we should be running to our doctors for that claim to be able to solve your everyday nuisances and worries. To think, in the past all we had to worry about was advertisers brainwashing our kids into thinking that the cool new snack on the market would make them popular in school. Now what we have are unethical appeals to our innate sense of helplessness as human beings with medications that are supposed to help us feel better about our unfulfilled lives.

Recently, artist Justine Cooper has designed a satirical website detailing her new miracle drug “Havidol”. The drug claims to treat “Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder” or DSACDAD. A person with limited medical and educational background might see an ad for a similar drug on television and completely believe that this ‘newly discovered disorder’ is the cause of all their problems and immediately get an appointment for a prescription from their physician. Despite how hilariously entertaining the claims and side effects of this fakey drug are (one of these being possible inter-species communication), this spoof is not that far from the reality of how the pharmaceutical industry is medicalizing things that used to be just a part of life.

Where should the industry draw the line? Should doctors be asked to prescribe such unsubstantiated drugs to their patients, when news of the disorder has just been made available? Shouldn’t such “disorders” be more of a job for a psychiatrist and not another potentially harmful drug? Is it ethically responsible for the pharmaceutical industry to target a depressed and socially underdeveloped audience that might be watching infomercials at 2am? I believe it is time to investigate how the pharmaceutical industry is manipulating their consumers’ autonomy and whether they really have their best interests in mind…