With TV Drug Ads, Don’t Believe Your Eyes
Dancing, biking, singing patients? The FDA needs to do more to crack down on misleading claims.
Worth the money?
Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Triumphant music plays as cancer patients go camping, do some gardening and watch fireworks in ads for Opdivo+Yervoy, a combination of immunotherapies to treat metastatic melanoma and lung cancer. Ads for Skyrizi, a medicine to treat plaque psoriasis and other illnesses, show patients snorkeling and riding bikes — flashing their rash-free elbows. People with Type 2 diabetes dance and sing around their office carrels thanks to Jardiance. Drugs now come with celebrity endorsements: Don’t you want the migraine treatment endorsed by Lady Gaga, Nurtec ODT?
Drug ads have been ubiquitous on TV since the late 1990s, and have spilled onto the internet and social media. Along with New Zealand, the US is the only country that legally allow direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising. (The European Union was furious when Lady Gaga’s Instagram post promoting the migraine drug was visible on the continent, noting it flagrantly violated its ban on direct-to-consumer advertising.)