Lying, scheming, scoundrels!
Eli Lilly is the drug company that makes "Prozac".
Prozac, used to treat depression, is patented, which means Eli Lilly can charge a fortune
for each prescription because nobody else can make or sell it. Unfortunately-- hold
the tears-- the patent on Prozac expires in August of 2001. Hold the tears.
Prozac is one of those wonder drugs that doctors love to prescribe to
people who come in and say they are tired and depressed and sad and unhappy and tired and
don't enjoy their lives and are miserable and unhappy and tired and so on and so on and since
the doctor doesn't have the time, ability, or inclination to make the person's life any
better-- to find them better jobs or spouses or children or neighborhoods or families-- he
prescribes a happy pill, which alters the basic chemical balance in the brain-- well, it
makes you happy. Like pot, except legal. And about $100 a month, which,
frankly, makes pot look like value for the dollar.
But-- hold the tears-- soon anybody will be able to make a drug called
"Prozac" and will be able to sell it for less than Eli Lilly. Lilly, one
of the most profitable corporations on the face of the earth, will have to actually begin
charging something close to what it actually costs to make the drug, plus a little profit.
Prozac earns Lilly about $2 billion a year. I'm not kidding.
I'm not exaggerating. The Washington Post said it: $2 billion! A
year! What's a greedy corporation to do, especially after all it's contributions to
election campaigns have failed to save it's patent!
Well, by golly, never underestimate the imagination and creativity of
the drug dealers. The "legit" drug dealers, I mean. Eli Lilly has
just introduced a new drug-- Sarafem-- and a massive advertising campaign to designed to
convince you that you're sick even if you aint. And low and behold-- holy
pharmaceuticals, Batman!-- Sarafem, in cute little pastel colours, is nothing other
than-- hold those tears!-- Prozac, relabeled and packaged!
Sarafem is for women suffering from PMDD. You don't know what PMDD
is? You don't?! Shocking. How could you not be aware of an illness that
is so absolutely scientifically proven that is has an official acronym?
Read the magazines! Watch television! See your doctor!
Ask her if you might be suffering from PMDD.
PMDD is "PreMenstrual Dysphoric Disorder". That's right.
Phew. First of all, breathe a sigh of relief if you are a man. Since
you aren't as likely to stuff yourself full of chemicals in the first place, you can
relish another opportunity to save yourself some money, because "Sarafem" costs
as much as the old patented Prozac-- about $100 a month. It is reported that women
take Sarafem every day.
Every day! I find that stunning. Prozac is not a
little pep pill or aspirin. It is a powerful psychotropic drug. And doctors
and the pharmaceutical industry just blithely go about trying to persuade as many normal
young women as possible to tamper with their brains.
Well, by golly, why does it cost so much? I'm glad you asked.
If Prozac is no longer a patent medicine after August 2001 and anybody can make
it....!
Ah-- the loopholes! You see if an existing drug can find a new
application, the patent on the new application of the existing drug can continue, in
this case, until 2007! So while anybody can make and market
"prozac", only Eli Lilly can make and market Sarafem.
Yahoo! Now all we need to do is find an illness!
Now how do you find an illness? Well, in the United States, the
APA (American Psychiatric Association) sort of officially defines mental illnesses.
It puts out this huge book called the "DSM" which is like the Bible of mental
health. You might remember a few years ago that the DSM has decided that
energetic two-year-olds are afflicted with a mental illness. Most parents have the
good sense to know that their child is merely a two-year-old. But, hey, where's the
profit in that? And do "most" parents really know this? The
statistics on the use of Ritalin do not encourage this assumption.
The importance of the DSM is that insurance companies use it to
determine whether or not they will pay for treatments. If it aint listed, it aint
covered. Of course, it is then in the interests of the health industry to ensure
that almost everything is listed, so that therapists, doctors, and
pharmacists can be
paid.
In other words, what the DSM has actually become is a shopping catalogue
of real and imagined complexes.
Anyway, we have women with periods. Periods, by all accounts, are
uncomfortable and annoying. In short, they sometimes make women feel bad. Now,
most people accept that PMS exists-- a kind of moody irritable stage of the monthly cycle
just before the period-- and that drugs that alleviate the feelings of
bloatedness and...
whatever.. make some sense. Some.
But even the DSM doesn't believe that PMDD really exists. It is
listed in the appendix as a condition that is "under evaluation". That
doesn't stop Eli Lilly from running advertisements that suggest that that lousy feeling
you have while pushing a heavy shopping cart in an ugly grocery store with three kids
screaming at you for candy can actually be blamed on an official, registered,
scientifically validated "disorder". See your doctor. Women do.
They see the ad, they see their doctors, their doctors prescribe, Eli Lilly gets
rich.
How can they get away with this? Well, the good old Food and Drug
Administration in the U.S. has decided that Lilly's opinion matters more than the DSM's.
It has approved Lilly marketing the drug for a non-existent disorder.
What we have here is something that, like Hyper Attention Deficit
Disorder or Hyper Disorder Attention Deficit or whatever it's called, defines normal
but unpleasant
conditions as a "disorder". That is the dream disease for the drug
companies because everyone has it. We have a limitless number of potential
customers. All we need to do is convince them that they're sick. And
Sarafem advertises itself as the only official remedy for PMDD.
What we need are ads that show the same external conditions that the Eli
Lilly ads show-- tired women, ugly stores, muzak, incoherent labels, over-priced candy,
noise, dust, rude clerks-- with a text that runs: "Does your life stink?
Try changing your life." One thing you could do is join an organization that
fights companies like Eli Lilly.
And hold the tears.
Copyright © 2001 Bill Van Dyk All rights
reserved.
Copyright © 2001 Bill Van Dyk All rights
reserved.
