Art Garfunkel Latest Celeb To Push Pharma Drugs
also How To Launch a Disease for Drug Sales
It’s a perfect match. Public figures who can no longer get movie roles or pack concert halls and drugmakers who want to eat up their loyal followers
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This week, Sun Pharma announced a partnership with Art Garfunkel of Simon & Garfunkel fame who will sell its lucrative, injected plaque psoriasis biologic drug ILUMYA.
The Uber-priced, “large molecule” biologic drug craze for minor conditions is partially explained by their greater resistance to generic competition (versus old fashioned pills) and now, their apparent immunity to tariffs.
Art Was a $ufferer
According to the drugmaker “Art joins a community of ILUMYA patients shedding light on the emotional toll of psoriasis and empowering others living with the condition to find the best treatment for them.”
"With support from my wife, Kim, and a treatment I trust, I am finally ready to give my history with psoriasis a voice," said Art. "After struggling for decades, I finally started ILUMYA about two years ago, and experiencing clearer skin has helped me regain my confidence. I am excited to share my story as part of the I LUV YA campaign in the hope that it will encourage others to find the right treatment for them."
(“Living with” a condition for which drugmakers have a drug and verbs like “struggling” and “suffering” are bleeding-heart terms that sell through melodrama and hypochondria.)
The Fonz Also Took a Dive
Not too long ago, former Happy Days star Henry Winkler also took the money and started hawking Apellis’ eye drug Syfovre. According to its manufacturer, the drug can cause retinal detachment, infection and an increased risk of wet age-related macular degeneration (as opposed to the dry age-related macular degeneration it treats—go figure). Do straight lines appear wavy? Do you require extra light to read? Do there seem to be missing spots in your vision? You may need our drug cajole the ads.
Syfovre has a current safety cloud over it in Europe which is more drug-cautious than the US and in 2019 its manufacturer Astellas agreed to a fine for violation of the False Claims Act by paying the Medicare copays for their own products. Nice.
TV Drug Ads and Celebrity Endorsements
Celebrity pharma endorsements began in earnest when drug ads first hit TV. Good Morning America host Joan Lunden and baseball player Mike Piazza pushed the allergy pill Claritin, Dorothy Hamill and the track star Bruce Jenner the pain pill Vioxx and actress Kathleen Turner pushed Embrel.
Sally Field pushed the bone drug Boniva, tennis star Monica Seles a “binge eating disorder” drug, actress Marcia Cross a migraine headache drug and race car driver Danica Patrick a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease drug.
And there was more. Singer LeAnn Rimes pushed an eczema drug, singer Cyndi Lauper pushed Novartis’ plaque psoriasis drugs and Breakfast Club star Molly Ringwald pushed a Sanofi drug.
And who can forget model Lauren Hutton’s promotion of menopause hormones––miracle, fountain-of-youth drugs until they weren’t?
Unbranded Ads Are Not From the CDC
It is said when the medication is ready, the disease and patients will appear and unbranded advertising is a case in point. Since unbranded ads don’t mention the drug being sold, people think they are public service announcements like “check your smoke detector batteries.”
GLP-1 agonist-rich Big Pharma now has ample millions if not billions to boost the disease-sell “disease awareness” campaigns, online quizzes and other internet/TV buys, “discount” coupons, hospital and medical association “grants,” doctor “speaking fees” of course celebrity endorsements. Celebs, for their part, get to appear in front of their fans once more--albeit with a little help from Pharma. END
HOW DO YOU LAUNCH A “DISEASE” HYPED TO SELL DRUGS?
* Issue a press release about how it is an “under-recognized” disease with many “barriers” and “stigmas” to treatment.
* Launch a TV campaign to “raise awareness” about the disease’s symptoms and risks factors to help “sufferers” in the general public self-diagnose
* Create a website with a quiz for people to determine if they have the disease and a script for them to take to the doctor to be prescribed the intended drug
* Hire doctors to warn people that the disease is progressive and silent and will only get worse if they ignore it and don’t seek treatment.
* Create patient front groups to lobby the FDA to approve expensive drugs for the disease and to lobby insurers to not substitute a lower cost drug
* Plant articles in respectable medical journals about the hidden costs of the under-recognized disease in hospitalizations and quality of life of sufferers which total more than the cost of insurers buying the drug itself.
* Develop a second drug that sufferers need to add to the first drug to boost its performance, either because the first drug doesn’t work or the people never had the disease in the first place.
Read more of this story here please https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/15/how-big-pharma-and-big-food-have-made-us-fat-and-sick-2/