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version seven. http://demongin.org |
Disgorged
A short essay on Pfizer's new PSA spot.
Thursday, 2009-04-23 | Big Media, Rat Blog, Zona Roja
Pfizer, the shadowy pharma giant which just recently gobbled up fellow Mega Corp Wyeth and which is perhaps best known for owning the rights to the designer drugs trafficked under the names Viagra and Zoloft, apparently produces PSA's.
And recently, the largest pill pusher in the world released a public service ad intended to discourage prospective pill poppers from ordering drugs from across national lines. It is, apparently, a common practice among people whose local taxes and tariffs on brand name drugs are financially burdensome to buy drugs from Canada or other non-US countries where users pay a lower rate per fix.
The ad, which I highly recommend (and which you may view on YouTube, for the time-being, at the following URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4-Qyu9KbBo) depicts an old, wealthy-looking white man--the sort of person who, in the semiotic landscape before criminally irresponsible wagers made by old, wealthy-looking white men brought nearly every economy on the planet to its knees, is the sort of person who wouldn't have appeared at first glance to be the type who generally makes criminally irresponsible wagers--receiving some pills in the mail. He takes one. Moments later, the tiny white pill undergoes a dramatic, Ovidian change while traveling down his esophagus, and becomes a dead rat.
Finally, the ad recommends a medical doctor's prescription as a means by which one can defend oneself from enduring a similar fate.
I've been away from the literature for a while, but I suspect that little has changed in the medical profession since I followed it more actively: it is probably still the case that credentialed medical practitioners (i.e. prescription writers) are underpaid, underappreciated and overworked and therefore live (out of necessity) in Big Pharma's back pocket, frequently demonstrating very poor ethics by endorsing Mega Corp product in exchange for cash and falsifying research results in exchange for notoriety. Additionally, it's probably still true Big Pharma is an incredibly powerful lobby, throws tons of soft money around and generally works hand-in-glove with legislators to maintain a favorable balance of trade and stay profitable by outlawing the free exchange of "trade secrets" and the unregulated trafficking of its dubious wares.
Big Pharma keeps everyone's palm good and greasy, essentially, and one hand washes the other.
With grease.
And if that's all still the case (and I'll wager that it is), then the message of the ad is crystal clear: "purchase and consume our mind and body altering products when, where and how we tell you at the rates upon which we have agreed with your elected officials," Pfizer says, "or it's your ass."
If this sounds familiar, it's because it is the refrain to every ragged piece of magnetic tape onto which Al Quaeda has ever stamped a transmission: "you will participate in the thinking and habits we endorse in a manner we deem apropriate," the terrorist threatens, "or it's your ass."
