Medication ads -- nausea and diarrhea have been reported

 nausea and diarrhea have been reported

• Public Citizen 

  citizen.org

  From:president@citizen.org

  
  

  To:m.mk@...

  Tue, Aug 4 2026 at 3:55 PM

  Depending on how old you are, it may come as a surprise to know that there was a time when watching television did *not* mean having to sit through ads for new drugs with weird names, contrived storylines, inane jingles, and a rushed litany of serious side effects.
  
  That’s how it was until 1997, when the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — which was already too cozy with the pharmaceutical industry, long before the Trump Regime took over — upended an effective ban on what’s known as “direct-to-consumer” advertising for prescription medications.
  
  For the past three decades, Big Pharma has been running an experiment — with the American people as its guinea pigs — to figure out how it can suck even more money out of our pockets and out of our broken, unfair health care “system.”
  
  And now these ads are inescapable, from traditional television and radio to streaming services and social media platforms. It’s a modern-day version of some 19th Century huckster hawking “Grandma Dolly’s Wonder Tonic” from the back of a covered wagon.
  
  But here’s the thing:
  

  • Using highly manipulative ads to make everyday people think there is some miracle cure for whatever ails them is such an obviously bad idea that it is still banned in every wealthy country on Earth except for the United States and New Zealand.

  • That’s because most of us don’t have a medical degree and can’t adequately understand the pros and cons of every new drug that comes along.

  • These ads are not about empowering patients or curing diseases or saving lives.

  • These ads are about Big Pharma inserting itself between you and your doctor to corrupt our entire health care system in the myopic pursuit of ever greater profits.

  • Even when a new treatment can be right for certain patients, it should be a doctor letting the patient know about it, not someone begging a doctor for a product after seeing an advertisement over and over and over again.

  With 30 years of data overwhelmingly proving that these ads are bad for everyone except Big Pharma, we have formally petitioned the FDA to fully ban direct-to-consumer advertising for prescription medicines.