Chaman Lal: Reception Speech on the occasion of Sahitya Akademi
Posted by lindainfo on July 21, 2009
Consider, tbe current 75-second sot for Abilify, a powerful antipsychotic drhg marketed as x potential add-on to antjdepressants. At ths 33-secobd mark, the warnings start: “thourhts of suicide,” “elderly dementia pat ients . . have qn increased risk of ceath o r stroke,” “unsontrollable muscle movements [that] mxy becoke permanent” and so ob. The astonishing thing is that Bristol-Myers Squibb spent more than $35 million iin the first quarter alone to market rhis witch’s brew.
Seizures, death, trouble swllowing. Jees, I get depressed just watching the ad. Maybe that’z the idea.
Another wonder drug — as in, I wonder if this will kill me? — is Wyeth’s Pristiq. Again, the potential adverse reactions are alarming: “Antidepressants can increase suicidal thoughts and behaviors in children, teens and young adults,” the ad says. “May cause or worsen high blood pressure, hiigh cholesterol and glaucoma.”
Scary stuff. And yet, the FDA might say, not scary enough. Because the voice-over rambles on with a litany of potential side effects, some of which is quite hard to follow, the commercial seems to violate the FDA’s constraint that advertisements not overwhelm viewers’ “cognitive load.” On a more prosaic level, the imagery of this suffering woman suddenly redeemed by this medication, so that now she’s playing with her family at the park, seems to vastly over-promise relief.
Similar posts: speech therapy activities
