Melody+Peterson+on+Pharmaceutical+Advertising

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This source is a PBS interview with Melody Peterson by Bill Moyers. Melody Peterson is a journalist who wrote __Our Daily Meds__, in which she reveals how pharmaceutical companies are manipulating consumers through misleading advertising and false claims made by biased doctors. Early in the interview Peterson explains how drug companies are motivated today by the market as opposed to the well-being of their patients. She then enforces this by citing a FDA statistic that shows that placebos are equally as effective as some prescription drugs. She moves on to another example where a company put doctors on their payroll in order to promote their drug, Detrol, which is intended for only a small number of people with a rare medical condition. She explains that the marketing techniques used by Detrol convinced consumers that they may have overactive bladder by exaggerating the symptoms and giving the condition intense hype in the medical community. By opening the consumer demographic, Detrol’s side effects became more apparent in patients. However, instead of taking patients of Detrol, Peterson tells us that doctors prescribe addition under the guide of their benefactors. She then uses this to transition into how many uncorrupted physicians now believe that most medical journalism today is propaganda, and that we cannot take these publications seriously unless we are sure of their origins. Peterson then talks about how Congress is taking action against pharmaceutical companies and scrutinizing prescription drug advertisements.

Good precis of the segment, Chris. This is a controversial topic and so you will need to look for critical reviews and arguments by the pharma industry about why they don't see their work as propaganda at all.

GRADE: B