Re: Non-competes

[Aaron Read <aread@speakeasy.net>]

At 11:37 AM 9/22/2003, Garrett Wollman wrote:
><<On Mon, 22 Sep 2003 11:23:49 -0400 (EDT), Sven Franklyn Weil 
><sven@gordsven.com> said:
>
> > I believe it's against the law for drug companies to out-and-out advertise
> > what the medicine does.
>
>Actually, they are allowed to make medical claims.  However, the
>conditions are somewhat onerous (and must include, for example, a
>detailed listing of the relative prevalence of side-effects) and so
>many companies still choose not to advertise the function of their
>medication -- particularly if it has an unfavorable safety profile.

Hehe...I think we can get back to broadcasting after this one...but 
recently I saw an ad for some drug (Lotronex, I think) that was 
specifically for women with "I.B.S."   It stands for "Irritable Bowel 
Syndrome" but they can't bring themselves to say that in the ad.  And it's 
only for women, but only for women within a certain age range and are not 
nursing, pregnant, might be pregnant, were pregnant at one time, or plan to 
be pregnant someday in the distant future, etc etc etc.   It's the ad with 
several women smiling freakishly with their midriffs exposed and symptoms 
written across their torsos.   It's almost disturbing in both style and 
realizing how dangerous this drug probably is...

The classic is the eTrade ad for "Nozulla"...the new drug for allergy 
sufferers, but the "symptoms may include itchy rashes, projectile vomiting, 
the condition known as hot dog fingers, full-body hair loss, gigantic 
eyeballs, children born with the head of a golden retriever..."   There's a 
video of it here: http://www.tao.to/funny/movies/e-trade-nozulla.mov


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aaron "Bishop" Read             aread@speakeasy.net
FriedBagels Consulting          AOL-IM: readaaron
http://www.friedbagels.com      Boston, MA