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Since 1997, drug companies have had the right to advertise drugs on TV. It is undeterminable whether or not people actually loath hearing a quick rambling of unintelligible side effects that a specific drug may cause, but one could safely bet that it is the cause for at least a few muted televisions during commercials. Drug commercials in general have been a relatively hot topic; many people don’t want their children being exposed to information about sexual diseases or shortcomings, or they blame drug commercials for their hypochondria – of course this is not the exhaustible list of philosophies surrounding drug commercials, but merely a handful of them; and really, almost all negative comments about drug commercials are negligible due to the fact that people can simply choose not to watch them. It’s understandable that people want options, and some people want the option to have cable TV sans any ad that they deem offensive, but that’s an entirely different issue.

Under the assumption that drug companies have a right to advertise their product, why should you, the consumer, care about whether or not side effects stay in drug commercials? The most compelling reason is that, unless you are a pharmacy technician or in some other relevant pharmaceutical field, you probably do not know what side effects could occur if you were taking a specific drug. So what about all of those muted TVs and the annoying auctioneer voice at the end of every drug commercial? Even if there is a need for side effects, how do the drug companies advertise these side effects? One solution would be to cut the number of side effects aired and make the rest of the side effects readily available elsewhere; it could be on the bottle of the drug, or on their website — wherever really, so long as consumers could conveniently access it and be informed.

Drug companies could take the most common or most dangerous side effects they want their consumers to know about and clearly state them somewhere in their ad. Cause for concern could arise from people taking a specific drug and experiencing some unmentioned side effect. They might attempt to blame drug companies for a failure to specify all side effects in their advertisement.

Taking the movie, Super-Size Me as an example, along with other books and movies with a similar theme, our society has a tendency to blame companies for influencing or “forcing” an individual to act against their health. If a company explicitly commits fraud and that fraudulence leads to someone’s ailments then there is definitely a case to be made against the company; however, a failure to do the research about a product, or simply read the side effects about a specific drug is simply negligence on the individual’s part.

So, as long as drug companies allow the side effects of their drugs readily available to consumers, then they can cut back considerably on the number of side effects they air, which will in turn make drug commercials infinitely less insufferable.

Author Byline:

Nolan Anderson is a student of philosophy who recently came back from teaching English abroad in China.