I thought it was illegal in Australia for pharmaceutical companies to advertise their products directly to consumers? If this is true, then what the hell are those very brief television advertisements that I've seen running on Australian free-to-air television in the last few days? They are clearly ads spruiking some kind of treatment for erection issues (is it just me, or are you also fed up to here with ads discussing adult issues all over the mass media?) and at the end of the ad the company logo of Eli Lilly is clearly shown. Is this advertisement campaign not in breach of Australian laws regarding the advertisement of prescription drugs?
I'm not the least surprised that Eli Lilly is behind this. One thing that I've noticed is that this drug company keeps coming up again and again like a dark thread in the many stories about the misdeeds of psychiatry, psychiatrists and the psychiatric drug industry that I have written about in this blog. Just click on the label for the company at this post to see what I mean. Eli Lilly are the manufacturers of the controversial drugs Strattera, which Martin Whitely MLA has written about and which has been the subject of an FDA "black box" warning and which has psychosis as well as many other serious problems as recognized side effects, and the very controversial and harmful neuroleptic psychiatric drug Zyprexa, which has been the subject of tens of thousands of lawsuits. Eli Lilly is among the various drug companies that have given support to the very powerful and influential Australian psychiatrists Patrick McGorry and Ian Hickie, who only disclose such conflicting interests when they feel like it.
Why is our government allowing a company with such a black reputation to advertise directly to Australian television viewers, apparently in breach of our laws that pertain to the advertisement of prescription drugs?
Further Reading
Wikipedia contributors (accessed 2011) Eli Lilly controversies. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Eli_Lilly_controversies&oldid=435806653
Zyprexa Victims.com
http://www.zyprexa-victims.com/
Whitely, Martin (2011) Strattera’s sad story. Speed Up & Sit Still.
http://speedupsitstill.com/strattera
No comments:
Post a Comment