If you are online or on TV and radio you can't miss it: personal care corporations inventing new hygiene problems to sell their products.
Even if you are using deodorant on "those places," your body stinks all over say some ads. If you stink all over, you are probably contaminating your sofa, chairs and whole house with "odor transfer" say other ads. If you launder your clothes, they likely still "stink" say more manipulative and unethical ads.
Certainly Madison Avenue knows that inventing personal and hygiene problems sells--who remembers "Ring Around the Collar" and "Visible Panty Line" for example?--but why "soap wars" now? Aren't the ubiquitous "ask your doctor" ads--exhorting people to inject themselves with cancer-linked "biologics" for what used to be minor conditions--doing their job?
The market for such "large molecule," injected drugs--also called biologics--is $300 billion say pharma websites. Not just because they cost more to the consumer than "small molecule" treatments (aka pills) but because they are cheaper to make--most derive from GMO hamster ovaries--and less vulnerable to generic competition.
Ask-your-doctor and "you stink" ads are more harmful than just turning people into hypochondriacs and body ashamed consumers though they certainly do that. As long as most ad revenue comes from drug maker and personal care product industries, consumers will never hear about health concerns from either one. The ads act as de facto censorship devices. Yet the health risks abound.
For example, here are some of the warnings found in prescribing information for Humira, the granddaddy of biologics which allowed AbbVie's lucrative split from Abbott in 2011:
"Serious infections have happened in people taking HUMIRA. These serious infections include tuberculosis (TB) and infections caused by viruses, fungi, or bacteria that have spread throughout the body. Some people have died from these infections. Your doctor should test you for TB before starting HUMIRA, and check you closely for signs and symptoms of TB during treatment with HUMIRA, even if your TB test was negative. If your doctor feels you are at risk, you may be treated with medicine for TB.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
