“Can anyone remember life before ‘Ask Your Doctor’ ads?” This question opens Martha Rosenberg’s Born with a Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks, and Hacks Pimp the Public Health, and hangs over the proceeding chapters. Even the most hardened cynic will be taken aback after reading Rosenberg’s powerful examination of Big Pharma and Big Food, their influence and reach severely miscalculated by an often passive public. It’s a text that serves as an instrument of combat against the forces that damage our health while marketing us junk and drugs we don’t need. I had the chance to speak with Rosenberg regarding how harmful trends and bunk science have become prevalent in our health industry.VICE: Your book examines the enormous prevalence of antidepressants in our culture. How did the pharmaceutical lobby develop such a firm grip on our medical industry?Direct-to-consumer drug advertising, which began in the late 1990s, is the biggest reason for Big Pharma’s outsized power. It doesn’t just sell antidepressants, sleeping pills, allergy pills and “Purple Pills” (while infusing broadcasters with major revenue), it sells depression, insomnia, allergies and acid reflux disease. DTC advertising has produced a nation of hypochondriacs taking pills for disease “risks” and sometimes actually wanting diseases in order to take highly advertised pills. DTC advertising has reduced doctors to order takers and gate keepers who cater to increasingly self-diagnosing and self-prescribing patients. Nor are doctors immune to the ad messages. Like Wall Street and the chemical industry, Big Pharma is also able to buy friendly laws and, some even say, friendly regulation.Read the rest at Motherboard.
Advertisement