The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has a new video on health fraud awareness. A worthy topic. It touches on weight loss products, HIV scams, cures for cancer and diabetes. What's noteworthy about the video is that it's SO boring. The inflections of the voiceover are totally inauthentic. It has the pacing of a 1970s newscast. There's almost no music. It's not sufficiently interesting to grab and hold anyone's attention.

News - and not just TV news -- has become infotainment. I would be the first to complain that this is a tragedy with major implications. But it's also a reality. To compete for attention, you need some creativity. The chances that this video had any input from a decent ad agency are slim.

The body as machine

Inventor spends Christmas with his perfect woman - a £30,000 custom-made fembot (The Daily Mail)

"Inventor Le Trung spent Christmas Day with the most important woman in his life - his robot Aiko. ... Her touch sensitive body knows the difference between being stroked gently or tickled. ... 'Aiko is always helpful and never complains. She is the perfect woman to have around at Christmas.' "

Celebrity health advice

Are celebrities crossing the line on medical advice? (USA Today)

"Many doctors say they're troubled by stars who cross the line from sharing their stories to championing questionable or even dangerous medical advice. ... Actress Suzanne Somers-- already well-known for her diet books and ThighMaster products -- in October released her 18th book, Knockout, which experts describe as a catalogue of unproven or long-debunked alternative cancer 'cures.' ... [Celebrities] 'can spread misinformation much faster than the average person with a wacky theory. ... Correcting that misinformation -- even with a mountain of evidence -- can be a challenge. ... 'It's much easier to scare people than to unscare them.' "

The Volkswagen E-UP! model is not only electric. It has over 10 square feet of solar panels. And it comes with an electric scooter that folds up and fits in the back. That way you can park at a recharging station, as long as it's not too far from your destination. Clearly VW wants to position itself with consumers as eco-friendly.

VW's ad agency has come up with a supporting concept: If you increase the fun quotient of something that's good for the environment, people will change their behavior. They call this The Fun Theory.

In one Fun Theory video, technicians worked overnight to turn subway stairs into a functional (sound-producing) piano keyboard. Reports are that 66% more people took the stairs rather than the power-consuming escalator. Good for the environment and good for health.

We've come a long way in the history of cigarette advertising. Here's a 1949 commercial for Camels.

The "More doctors smoke Camels" campaign was a response to concerns, starting in the 1940s, that smoking caused lung cancer and heart disease. There had been a series of articles on this in the widely read Reader's Digest. What better reassurance that smoking was not harmful than an endorsement from doctors?

Last week the CEO of Roche Pharmaceuticals had some candid comments on direct-to-consumer advertising:

Direct-to-consumer promotion [of drugs] was the single worst decision for the industry. ... When industry says we're spending all the money on R&D but actually it's spending it on TV advertising to preserve margins, it doesn't get much credibility.

William Burns went on to say the "marginally different and market-it-like-hell model [of prescription drugs] is over."

Who besides the pharmaceutical industry thinks direct-to-consumer DTC advertising is a good idea? Doctors object to patients who self-diagnose and then insist they know just what the doctor should order.

So what happens is they come into the office, and they'll say: 'I need a certain drug.' And a lot of times we'll spend more time either negating the diagnosis that they've made just by the commercial, in addition to explaining why that certain medication is not appropriate for the following reasons.

The public actually sees some advantages to DTC ads. They educate, raise awareness and reduce stigma (think Viagra). But the public also understands that these ads raise prescription drug prices, stimulate unnecessary demand, and do a poor job of explaining the negative side effects.

Personally I think it's one thing for an ad to sweet-talk me into buying a Lexus, but when it comes to my health, someone - the FTC perhaps? - should just say no. DTC ads are only allowed in the US and New Zealand. There's a good reason.

Osteoporosis and the flying nun

Burns' company Roche sells the once-a-month osteoporosis drug Boniva, whose spokeswoman is Sally Fields. For Fields, promoting Boniva is part of her feminist cause:

I want to help change the way women live as they age. We have fought so hard in our lives for things to be better, not to accept the status quo. We surely can't stop now that we are entering this next part of our lives

President-elect Obama has made it clear he wants to change US health policy, and he appears to have widespread public support to do just that. The pharmaceutical industry, on the other hand, likes things just the way they are. We can expect Big Pharma to put up a fight to protect their interests and, in fact, the first shot will be fired this week. But the pharmas need to walk a fine line. Their public relations efforts over the past few years have been an attempt to win public sympathy. Now they need to attack Obama without jeopardizing all that goodwill.

One change in health policy already singled out by Obama is the federal government's ability to negotiate Medicare drug prices. This particular item could cost the drug industry as much as $30 billion. Not surprisingly, PhRMA, the largest pharmaceutical lobbying group, has been preparing for this moment and last week announced a new public relations campaign.

"We're going to do an ad campaign that is designed to make people aware of the importance of preserving your free-market health care system." This from Ken Johnson, a senior VP at PhRMA, quoted in the Washington Times.

In a post titled "Is big pharma preparing to shoot itself in the foot?", David Williams had this to say:

[The PhRMA ad campaign] may try to have the same impact as the famous Harry and Louise ads of 1993 that undermined the planned Hillary Clinton-led reform bill. ... If that's really the aim, someone is misjudging the mood of the public. People aren't looking for "free-market" anything at the moment, especially when what the pharmaceutical industry really means by "free market" is pricing freedom for themselves. ... Here's some friendly advice to the pharmaceutical industry: don't make the mistake of attacking the policies of our new President. Such a move is likely to backfire.

PhRMA polishes its image

PhRMA hasn't been sitting on the sidelines during the election campaign, waiting to see who wins. PhRMA's Johnson also had this to say:

There's been plenty of coverage of the Obama and McCain health plans during the presidential election campaign. I debated whether to contribute my opinion and decided against it. I think everyone is exhausted with media coverage. There's a nice Time Magazine article this week on "The 24-Minute News Cycle." It was reassuring to read that I'm not alone in refreshing the Google News page.

I can recommend some sources on the health care debate that go deeper than the rivalry of two candidates. There is a page put together by The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) called Election 2008. I especially liked the article "Three 'Inconvenient Truths' about Health Care" by V. R. Fuchs. I may write about that article later. Health care is not an issue that's going to disappear simply because the election frenzy is over.

Medicalization and disease mongering

I don't have a lot of personal complaints about medicalization. As a woman, I don't worry about erectile dysfunction or male pattern baldness. I haven't had to decide to use Ritalin for a hyperactive child or growth hormones for a son who is shorter than his classmates. In my heart of hearts, I consider myself a social deviant (and am proud of it), but I don't exhibit behavior that brings me to the attention of physicians, psychiatrists, or the law.

Many things that used to be considered a normal part of life - childbirth, menopause, insomnia, sadness, excess weight, aging, death - have been redefined as medical conditions and subjected to diagnosis and treatment. This process is called medicalization: Redefining a non-medical condition as a medical one. Medicalization is a major contributor to the health culture. It broadens the definition of health and encourages us to think of ourselves as in need of medical attention.

The active process of converting a benign condition into a medical disease is called disease mongering. Lynn Payer wrote a whole book on the subject: "[D]isease mongering - trying to convince essentially well people that they are sick, or slightly sick people that they are very ill - is big business. For people to use a diagnostic product or service, they must be convinced that they MAY BE sick. And to market drugs to the widest possible audience, pharmaceutical companies must convince people - or their physicians - that they ARE sick."