Subject: Commercials
Date: Sun Aug 21 21:44:48 2016
User: Snowguy
Message:I sometimes have to shake my head at what I hear and see.
One is a medication, let's call it "our product." The warnings at the end, on tv, include, "Don't use our product if you are allergic to our product." (Well, duh!)
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Another on the radio is a financial program to take care of excessive credit card debt:
"...you have the "right" to "settle your credit card debt for less than you owe!"
Wrong. You have the right to pay debt in full.
You have the right to try to re-negotiate debt, and hope for the best.
You have the right to reneg or welch on debt and hope for the best.
You have the right to declare bankruptcy and hope for the best.
No "right" to settle for less than you owe!
Some commercials are positively screwy
(Any others?)
Date: Sun Aug 21 22:18:32 2016
User: Punster
Message:Sometimes the possible side effects from the suggested medication sound WORSE than the ailment.
Date: Mon Aug 22 09:14:28 2016
User: Snowguy
Message:Yeah. I know.
"May cause one or more eyeballs to fall out, penis and gonads to shrivel, new eye in middle of forehead, and possibly a prolonged and agonizing death."
(But tests show it could improve your skin condition.)
Date: Mon Aug 22 11:24:20 2016
User: JRW
Message:Or..."You should stop taking this medication if you're dead."
Date: Mon Aug 22 12:57:04 2016
User: Snowguy
Message:Okay., I heard one that said, in essence: "Don't use our product if you are allergic to our product (and added) or to its ingredients."
Really helpful there...
Date: Mon Aug 22 14:14:24 2016
User: hotnurse
Message:Any medication or product with meds in them has to disclose if even one single person out of millions had a particular reaction or side effect. As with consent for surgery the doc has to state that "even possible death" although that death may have been due to the anesthetic or from the condition of the patient before surgery...like they might have been a train-wreck of health issues and died during a simple gallbladder removal so death is always a possibility.
If the doc or the drug company doesn't disclose that problem and a person comes up with their eyeball slipping onto the floor then the pt. can sue the socks off of the doc/company for gazillions...only in America...
Date: Mon Aug 22 15:24:10 2016
User: TNmountainman
Message:That's not technically accurate, hottie. If the side effect is considered minor or somewhat trivial, it doesn't have to be disclosed "if even one single person" has a mild headache, or feels slightly dizzy for a few minutes. It's to scale. If it's death, or something very serious, then yes, it's on the insert thing (or what used to be that). If there is an N of 10,000 say, and there are only 3 headaches, that's not gonna get mentioned, I don't think. That all gets hashed out with the FDA; they have to approve the verbiage, after examining carefully the statistics.
Date: Mon Aug 22 15:49:47 2016
User: TNmountainman
Message:[I've always been "intrigued"/mystified as to why about 80% of pharmaceutical tv commercials seem to be presented in slow motion. To my knowledge it started with Embrel. (Do they think us old folks need that in order to follow the script?!?) Anyway, I started riffing on that some years ago to friends, and one of them very recently came up with the name of the (proposed) drug to make us "like everybody else". So, I churned this out in about 15 minutes the other day. Not sure if it's lame or pretty decent. Imagine as the TV commercial....... ]
[P.S. - even tho I've probly seen (more properly, "seen the beginning of") forty Embrel commercials, I have NO idea what it's supposed to do, 'cause I'm just so mesmerized by the slo motion aspect. Just seems like from the commercials it supposed to slow you down. I truly have not clue one.]
[Also, in my orginal script, which we can't see here, I had the quotes all italicized, the name in a nice color, and a nice purdy layout.]
(And the political jab is humor, not politics, Denny.)
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Ok, so you've tried Embrel, and sure, it slowed down your body, but did it leave your mental processing still too far ahead of your friends and famly? Well now there's Imbecillium, the new approach to slowing your brain down, too.
Testimonial:
"Hi, I'm Caroline. I found it way too frustrating to try and get everyone else to keep up with my trains of thought, or to grasp what concepts I was trying to convey. I was about to lose my mind (ha-ha), until I heard about Imbecillium. It's *much* easier to slow down my own brain than try to speed up everyone else's! I have SO many more friends now!"
Testimonial:
"Hi, my name is Arthur. Until I found out about Imbecillium, I had a hard time carrying on a conversation; even with my hearing aid turned up to 10, I couldn't hear any gears turning in my friends' noggins. I tried beer, wine, reefer............even barbiturates. None of those other things dulled my senses like Imbecillium does."
Testimonial:
"Hi, I'm Tony. After the university cut my faculty position, there just didn't seem to be any available jobs to fit my skills. But that was before Imbecillium. Now I work part-time as a Wal-Mart greeter and couldn't be happier!"
So if your friends don't seem to want to talk to you about the latest NASCAR happenings, and your doped-out son Johnny doesn't want to hang with you 'cause he thinks you're too "smart" (or "weird") for him to relate to, there is now hope. In independent tests, 8 out of 10 researchers could not tell the difference between patients on Imbecillium and regular clerks at the Jiffy Mart (after tattoos were factored out of the analysis).
Testimonial:
"I'm Sandy. I had a hard time making friends, but now with Imbecillium, I get tons of attention and a real sense of belonging at Donald Trump rallies. I hear that when he gets in office, he'll put it in the water!
Coming soon! -- Imbecillium for Kids: Don't make your little Susie be an outcast because of making straight A's. Get her started on the right path for a happier future!
IMBECILLIUM -- for when you're just too damn smart for your own good!!
[Warning: not for those with an IQ already below 92. Do not take while pregnant unless you live in Hawkins County, TN. (Mr.Buck will get *that* reference; or you can substitute West Virginia, Oklahoma, New Jersey, or whatever region you want to slight. And that is *not* where I live.) If married, it is recommended that both spouses take Imbecillium at the same time. For stupidity lasting more than 4 hours, do *not* seek medical attention. That's what the medicine is *supposed* to do.]
[music by Devo]
Date: Mon Aug 22 17:29:26 2016
User: hotnurse
Message:TN, technically you are correct. I understand your answer but I was just exaggerating a bit...but not much. My nurse-friend's daughter does writing for drug brochures, she is a lawyer too. The drug companies have to be pretty accurate about how they write those things.
From experience though, when reading a surgery consent to a patient pre-op, I know that the docs *always* mentioned "possibility of death" and included the most accurate stat that existed at the time. But...most patients only hear what they want to hear so docs have a witness (us nurses) with them when reading this and we also sign the consent along with the patient and doc.
Btw, this may only be true in Indiana...state/hospital laws/rules differ.
Date: Mon Aug 22 23:05:09 2016
User: TNmountainman
Message:I knew you were exaggerating, hottie, and hope I didn't come off as "correcting" you, altho it might read like that. I was aiming at non-medical people who might not know how that process and system work. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
Date: Tue Aug 23 09:00:52 2016
User: hotnurse
Message:Not a bit TN, I got your point. And...you being you I expected that, lol. All's good buddy.
Just a note of imo here...if it weren't for fear of people v.s. anyone with good intentions the medical community wouldn't have to be so perfectly exact in their wording, whether written or verbal.
I can't tell you how many people before going into a surgery where they *knew* that they were going to be "cut open" come back post-op and complain that either the doctor didn't tell them that there would be a scar or they weren't happy with the appearance of the scar even though it was in an area totally hidden with regular clothing. So...here come the judge.
Date: Fri Aug 26 11:40:08 2016
User: wildcard
Message:"I want to be able to walk through the nuances that only someone from my generation can understand."
-ad for some geezer dating site
That is so stupid in so many ways. I'm all for originality, but I'd prefer something actually intelligent, not just pretending to be.
Date: Wed Sep 7 12:52:56 2016
User: The_Longhorn
Message:):o Then, there's the Febreze commercial where the mom tells her son he needs to spray his bedroom before his guests arrive. It turns out his guests are female. Wow, what a mom!
Date: Wed Oct 5 07:01:49 2016
User: wildcard
Message:She won't have those girls thinking her son is STINKY!
How about the one with the toddler pooping on the furniture? Real classy.
Date: Sun Jun 5 04:45:57 2022
User: _.!._
Message:2011 never seemed so far away. Whats TAB? How time flies.
Date: Sun Jun 5 06:18:19 2022
User: Katya
Message:Those drug commercials are only slow until they get to the possible side effects. Then it's speed-up time.
Drug commercials bug the h out of me anyway. That "ask your doctor if <drug of the month> is right for you" is so aggravating. If your doctor thought it was right for you you'd probably be taking it.
<Drug of the month> of course costs about 50 times the generic you're currently happily on that works just as well and doesn't bankrupt you.
Also so many of the ads are for drugs that are inherently fairly dangerous - many are immune-suppressing to treat autoimmune diseases for example. Again if your doctor thinks you need it you're probably already taking it. And almost all the people seeing the ad don't need it since those conditions are fairly rare.
Another thing that's important to the drug companies is to keep the drug going. Two different examples. There was formerly on the market an antihistamine called Seldane (terfenadine) . It was known that if taken with certain other drugs it could cause a potentially fatal arrhythmia - eg with erythromycin. Initially when reports of this occurred the FDA required the company to provide educational warnings to doctors. But the public didn't hear about this until the patent was about to expire. And it was taken off the market around 1998 because of the serious side effects. And low and behold Allegra appears - Allegra is actually a metabolite of Seldane that doesn't cause the side effects.
In another case one of the original proton pump inhibitors (used for acid reflux and ulcers) Prilosec (omeprazole) is actually a racemic mixture (two optical isomers) of the drug. As time passed and the patent was getting old, voila! the Purple Pill appeared. This was actually Nexium (esomeprazole). I think the company patented the process of separating the isomers - as you can tell from the generic name, Nexium only contained one of the isomers, the pharmaceutically active one and amazingly the dose was half that of omeprazole. It of course cost a relative fortune and many drug plans wouldn't pay for it.
And then there's the Colcrys story, but that's for another time.
Such are the wonders of Big Pharma.
Date: Sun Jun 5 06:54:42 2022
User: outskirts
Message:Thank you Dr Katya. When they say "ask your doc, etc" I say "Isn't that his job? Isn't that why he studied all those years? Isn't that why he gets the BIG BUCKS?"
It's really worse than "ask your doctor". It's pretty much "tell your doctor", probably because folks grew up seeing those ads thinking that's how it works.
Date: Sun Jun 5 10:25:21 2022
User: BuzzClik
Message:I used Sedane for a couple of years until I started experiencng an occasional "heart flutter." I stopped using it and took up Flonase, though Flonase is far less effective for me.
A colleague told me (way back then) the same facts conveyed above by Katya: the problem with Seldane is the parent compound, but a metabolic derivative of the Seldane (now out as Allegra) is active agent against allergies. Now that my little flutters have gone away, I may once again try Allegra.
Date: Sun Jun 5 23:18:06 2022
User: Katya
Message:Then there's the Colcrys story - or how a drug in use since at least 1500 BC (in the form of the autumn crocus) suddenly increased in price by 2000%. Colchicine (brand name Colcrys) used to be dirt cheap. It was a drug that was never formally approved by the FDA but had been in use forever for gout and other conditions like Familial Mediterranean Fever.
However as an unintended consequence of the FDA's 2006 safety program called the Unapproved Drug Initiative by which pharmaceutical companies were encouraged to do rigorous testing for efficacy and safety on drugs like colchicine that had never been officially approved the price skyrocketed.
Enter a small drug company called URL Pharma. It obtained licenses for testing drugs like colchicine. These folks did a clinical study on a single dosage schedule of colchicine and then submitted a New Drug Application for it. They gained formal FDA approval and a monopoly over the drug and monopoly pricing took over. Eventually in 2012 URL Pharma was bought by Takeda a Japanese drug company and the price increased even more. Now the price is multiple dollars per pill for what used to cost a few cents.
I haven't seen any actual commercials for the stuff, but this is a just another example of how big Pharma takes it to the consumer.
Date: Mon Jun 6 02:47:42 2022
User: TNmountainman
Message:Gee - I didn't realize colchicine had been "patented". Can aspirin be far behind?
And this board needs more discussion about racemic mixtures, and how to separate them. Sometimes easy, sometimes very hard. In fact, we hardly ever even discuss chiral compounds or chiral carbons. Altho I think we did once or twice once upon a time. (FYI, colchicine has only 1 chiral carbon - for all those wondering).
And p.s. - there has been work done with colchicine analogs, and nanoformulations, trying to make it safer. I don't know how far those efforts have gone. And there are many trials ongoing (or recently concluded) about possibly using colchicine for [that acronym that gets threads killed], but evidence is weak and/or equivocal.
So.........................just why did the autumn crocus start manufacturing colchicine? What use does it serve in that plant only? And of course we can ask that question of the thousands of naturally-occurring compounds in thousands of other plants. It's quite the mystery - unless one considers that that was God's plan to benefit us in the loooong run. Just a thought.............. But truly..................this is something I've always wondered about. What purpose does salicin and the other biophenols in willow bark serve (to that tree)? And if there is something in that willow tree, why not also in a sycamore or oak tree? Etc. We know plants are an astonishing compendium of chemical compounds, but why so many? What evolutionary forces drove that chemical diversity? Well, we can suppose, I guess, the same evolutionary forces that drove species differentiation in general. But the actual synthesis of these compounds seems even more mysterious to me. I mean, it's not too hard to imagine a pink flower somehow giving a plant a competitive advantage somehow, but does the chemistry have to change, too?
Date: Sun Jan 15 23:18:44 2023
User: ix
Message:that looks so incredibly real that it underscores the need to vet things, you know, like dan quayle quotes.
Date: Sun Jan 15 23:29:29 2023
User: BuzzClik
Message:… or many of the quotes in the MOF. Great entertainment; check you skepticism at the door.
Date: Mon Jan 16 01:25:30 2023
User: TNmountainman
Message:Yeah, it's extremely well-done. With all the incredible feats attributed to Lee (and Chuck Norris for that matter), one needs to analyze carefully to make sure it's authentic. 😉
I thought about adding this one onto the original post, but decided that making a separate post/link later would be more 'fun'. While clearly that Lee one is real........I have niggling doubts on this performance. Not to mention, they don't play by the rules. Several shots are hit before the ball hits the table. Illllegal. ✋🛑
Link: This guy out-Bruce Lees Bruce Lee
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