Googling your Symptoms:

[ruth-gehrig]

I've always found it peculiar that pharmaceutical companies feel the need to market their prescription meds to us through commercials. If they can't convince the doctors that we need one of their drugs they'll hit up the consumer and hope they go bug their physician about it and convince them that it's needed.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by ruth-gehrig

I've always found it peculiar that pharmaceutical companies feel the need to market their prescription meds to us through commercials. If they can't convince the doctors that we need one of their drugs they'll hit up the consumer and hope they go bug their physician about it and convince them that it's needed.

With all the disclaimers in the last 30 seconds about how the drug could kill or maim you and cause everything else under the sun, I am surprised the ads work -- assuming they do. The people playing those caring doctors and the trusting patients crack me up. A more realistic ad would show a doctor running an hour late and barely listening while typing into his or her laptop. OK, to be fair, not all are like that.

[ruth-gehrig]

Watch any of those commercials with the tv muted and it's impossible to accurately guess what condition the drug is designed to treat.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by ruth-gehrig

Watch any of those commercials with the tv muted and it's impossible to accurately guess what condition the drug is designed to treat.

The depression ones have women with those studied sad looks.

[ruth-gehrig]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

The depression ones have women with those studied sad looks.

I would have guessed her husband just got a Viagra script and she wasn't to happy about it

[barrysloate]

I regularly watch the Evening News at 6:30, and that's a show whose audience is clearly 50 and older. I would say that every commercial during the half hour is pharmaceutical. It's rare to find one that isn't. The industry has literally bought that time slot on all the major networks. So the advertising is clearly working.

I think it's because as we get older and sicker, we get more depressed, and the people in the commercials are having more fun than the viewers could ever imagine. Take the meds for a couple of weeks and you'll be dancing, hiking, biking, laughing, and will surely have a more active social life. It may never occur to those watching that these are actors reading a script and not actual patients. They have probably never even taken that medication.