The producers of the soap opera General Hospital have worked out a deal with a pharma company to give one of the show’s characters a rare disease only the company’s drug can treat.
UD admires this marketing as much as she did the toy blocks with the name of a powerful antipsychotic on them.
Another favorite sales tool that began to be distributed in the waiting rooms of [pediatricians] were Legos imprinted with a Risperdal logo.
It’s our country’s most amazing, most expanding, frontier: Already a huge number of ads that interrupt soap operas are for anti-depressants, etc. etc. Now the shows themselves push controlled substances.
****************
UD sees a new tv comedy set in a hapless but adorable oxycodone clinic. Lil’s Pill Mill is run by a brassy wisecracking distributor with a heart of gold and her tattooed boyfriend Scooter who powers into the West Virginia hollers on his Harley to make deliveries. The simple but desperate mountain folk are colorful and hilarious. Each week brings a new challenge as the LPM staff seeks to evade detection by government agents, or as Lil suspects Scooter’s got “special friends” who turn tricks for him in exchange for the oxy.
May 28th, 2017 at 10:36AM
It could even feature cameo appearances by the CEO of Mylan, West Virginia’s very own pharmaceuticals predator (she of EpiPen fame) and her double speaking father Senator Joe Manchin from WVa.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/epipen-price-hike-controversy-mylan-ceo-heather-bresch-speaks-out/
May 28th, 2017 at 2:44PM
Barney: I love the idea of special guest appearances. There are also many non-WV possibilities. Martin Shkreli’s still not in jail, right?
May 28th, 2017 at 8:38PM
But just as the character is ready to pick up her life-saving prescription at the pharmacy, she learns that her evil twin beat her to it. Little does the evil twin know, but the possible side effects of the drug include vomiting, nausea, shortness of breath, and erections lasting more than four hours, three of which she experiences just as she is about to seduce the heroine’s unsuspecting husband. As the closing credits play, we see the heroine barely holding on to life at General Hospital as the monitor beeps her irregular pulse. The handsome doctor turns to his nurse, with whom he is having a torrid affair, and remarks, “Forget it. She’s got a pre-existing condition now.”
May 28th, 2017 at 9:27PM
https://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Ginsberg/11-3-75/Ginsberg-Terkel-Burroughs_Burroughs-and-Ginsberg-on-Addiction_Drury_Word-of-Mouth_11-3-75.mp3
May 29th, 2017 at 5:35AM
Bernard, UD, TAFKAU: your “script” is actually working for me. I’m about an hour north of WV. Lots of Scots-Irish hill country folks who’d come here for factory work. Now they’ve got nothing to do. Plenty of ethnics, too, to mix it up.
The special guest appearances by global Big Pharma trash is big-time good. Toss in the rest of Big Medicine’s Iron Pyramid. (“You need to make better health care choices, Jimbob.”)
Chuck Lorre’s production folks?
June 1st, 2017 at 3:59PM
BTW-Ohio’s AG Mike Dewine indicted five Big Pharma companies a day or so ago. Opioids. Fraudulent this and that. Dewine used to be a standard-issue Republican corporate arse-kisser. Don’t know if he’s getting political “guidance” from any national entity.
The annualized death rate from all ODs in my county is about 68/100,000 so far. (Not a misprint.)