Pharma Spin/Propaganda Only Belongs In Fiction (Now It's Invaded A Soap Opera)

townhall
Mytheos Holt |
Posted: May 31, 2017 12:01 AM



Those who follow the healthcare world’s comings and goings or watch the soap opera General Hospital are aware of a highly embarrassing story: Big Pharma is literally inserting its propaganda into TV medical show scripts.

Yes, really. This revelation came in a bizarre General Hospital episode about polycythemia vera, a disease so rare that only two in 100,000 people suffer from it. Television mysteries about rare disorders are nothing new (just ask Dr. Gregory House). But this one was so outlandishly uncommon it made an actual doctor, Vinay Prasad, suspicious. Prasad began investigating why General Hospital was covering this nigh-unheard of bone disorder. He discovered that Incyte – a drug company that sells a single drug that treats (what else) polycthemia vera – asked General Hospital to work the disease into the show’s plot.

As far as pharmaceutical sector malfeasance goes, this development might seem more pathetic than troubling. But when you consider that aggressive marketing helped fuel the opioid epidemic, it’s more alarming. Granted, it’s a free country, and advertising is part of a long tradition of free speech. But warning television audiences about this kind of subliminal messaging is a far cry from calling for regulation of speech. From the looks of it, those warnings could get more and more necessary if this trend keeps up.

And forgive the obvious point, but isn’t it hypocritical for Hollywood liberals to lecture us on the need for government-controlled healthcare even as they secretly shill for Pharma in their TV dramas? We shouldn’t be surprised – after all, Pharma and Hollywood both loved Hillary Clinton, too – but you’d think they’d know how to keep the hypocrisy a little subtler.

Why haven’t TV shows like General Hospital done episodes about how drug prices have been spiking in recent years, sometimes by hundreds of percentage points? The pharmaceutical industry is charging patients through the nose. They are also gouging hospitals like the one on General Hospital itself. Further, they go out of their way to shut down competition from overseas, and from generic drug manufacturers, that could stop the pain by driving prices down. This rarely gets mentioned in medical shows.

Hollywood must not want to dirty its dainty liberal hands with actual details on how to help people struggling with the high price of medical care. No other explanation seems to fit. The problems surrounding access to drugs are extraordinarily fertile ground for drama. Imagine the heartstrings Hollywood could pull with a story about a children’s hospital that tries desperately to be able to purchase cancer drugs at affordable prices. Such plots would have the benefit of being true, as well: Consider Pharma’s incessant assault on the 340B drug pricing program.

TV showrunners should not be forced to obey some sort of arbitrary fairness doctrine when coming up with dramatic arcs. But if pharma critics can respect the creative freedom of General Hospital’s writers, why can’t pharmaceutical companies?

Obviously, because with the public and their representatives in Washington getting increasingly impatient with Big Pharma’s spin, the industry desperately feels the need to get good press somehow. And in a sad way, I suppose it’s fitting that the only place where pharma can look good is a wholly fictional universe. Here in reality, reform is still needed, and no amount of soap opera-generated spin can change that.


Thank You Mr Holt and Townhall.

Psychology's Fascist Legacy

Psychology and Psychiatry brought us the NAZI holocaust and WWII's 69 Million dead. And Pyschology's NAZISM is Not through with Anyone by Any stretch of the imagination.

Psychology's wretched Fascism still stalks all of us as one of the most teeth gritting, sand in our shorts at the beach, nuisances imaginable, even for those Not condemned by it's Psychic, Fakir Fiat as Mentally Ill.

Meet Edward Bernays; the father of modern Public Relations, Mass Marketing, and Crowd Psychology.




This annoying jackass is responsible for Every annoying interruption, Every 3-7 minutes on TV, to sell you Every Nothing you Never wanted to buy. Schnook.

You can also thank 'Fast Eddie' for Every one of those free pop-up offers of free spyware that grit your web surfing teeth.





Ed had a book to peddle. Propaganda

"If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it? The recent practice of propaganda has proved that it is possible, at least up to a certain point and within certain limits."

Ed called this scientific technique of opinion-molding the "engineering of consent."

"If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway," Ed said. Ed set to propping up the bacon industry by surveying Physicians who recommended a hearty breakfast. He then mailed out his survey results to 5000 Physicians recommending a 'Hearty Breakfast' of bacon and eggs, along with its artery cloggings and coronary occlusions. Thanks Ed.


Hitler's own Minister of Propaganda. Dr. Little Joe Goebbels, himself would have been proud of Little Eddie.


In Propaganda (1928), his [Eddie's] most important book, Bernays argued that the manipulation of public opinion was a necessary part of democracy:

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind."


Here, the Social Masses of Warsaw are having Their wires pulled [right out of the wall socket] by folks who thought just like Eddie.

For this Slug, his fascination with everyone Else's liberties being run over by behind the scene manipulators of the unseen mechanisms, [for those little people's own well being of course] dovetailed just fine with his Own libertine fattening of his Own libertine purse by whoring out to "the Dodge Brothers, Procter & Gamble, the American Tobacco Company, Cartier, Inc., Best Foods, CBS, the United Fruit Company, General Electric, Dodge Motors, the fluoridationists of the Public Health Service, Knox-Gelatin, and many others."

Does anyone remember Abraham Brill, from a previous post here? Abe and Eddie worked together to popularize public cigarette smoking [and its associated cancers] for women under their slogan of "Torches of Freedom."

This poster advertises the Nazi charity, the NSV. The text translates: "Health, child protection, fighting poverty, aiding travellers, community, helping mothers: These are the tasks of the National Socialist People's Charity. Become a member!" Courtesy of Dr. Robert D. Brooks.



This one's self evident; just like today's message from today's National Socialist, child protection, fighting poverty, yada yada yada Mental Health Intellectual and Spiritual Maroons. 'Working together we can once and for all Slay the Dragon of 'Mental Illness'. [So long as you and your kids don't mind being slain along With that dragon by the Mental Health industry's kick-backed, medi-quack, poison dealers]

Fast Eddie grifted most of his opportunistic, Socialist ideology from his uncle, that coked out old millipede himself, Sigmund Freud: that coke addled herpes blister who croaked out: "America is a mistake, a giant mistake."


So here's looking at you Eddie, you Fascist Freak.


This poster celebrates freedom following the collapse of communism in Hungary in 1989. It reads: Comrades it's Over!

It's time to give Psychiatry the same rousing 'It's Over!' too, along with the oxymoronic Govt. compassion of Drugging every child in America.

Cut the GD Funding Off, All of It, Now.