Easy Targets

In 2001, the BIG 5 Pharma companies in US spent $20 billion to promote drugs, most of which were me too drugs. Me too drugs are as good as other drugs available with just different names. Many of them are no better than sugar granules in a capsule.

Companies like Merck and Pfizer were accused of scaring healthy people into forcing their doctors to give them specific brand of medicines. Take for example shyness. That's something many of us have and there is nothing medically wrong about it. Pharma companies gave it the name of Social Anxiety Stress Disorder and created a disease which didn't exist. Result was that a healthy person who happened to see the advertisement started thinking that he was sick and went to his doctor demanding for the drug advertised. In fact the kind of budget Pharma companies have in store to promote drugs is unimaginable. They even created a disease out of dreaming and launched a drug in the market for it. Lipitor was a part of a huge controversy and was suggested as a cause of increased heart attacks in the US.

When the power of money meets advertising, an ill informed consumer is an easy target.