For STAT, Rebecca Robbins investigates how drug and medical companies bankroll classroom lesson plans, print comic books, and promote smartphone apps aimed at teaching children about their products. “Health information should come from experts, not from people who are trying to make money,” said pediatrician Dr. Victor Strasburger, who has studied the effects of media on children and teens. “Drug companies obviously have a conflict of interest when it comes to what they’re going to say.”
Insidious and horrifying. Thanks for linking to this article. I’ll be showing it to both my kids.
Liz Sydney
When I got my marketing degree I was taught that false advertising was illegal in the US. But this legal reality in the US seems to have been ignored, or forgotten, by today’s multinational pharmaceutical corporations.
“…the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life; the sick, the needy and the handicapped. ”
~Last Speech of Hubert H. Humphrey
I’m quite certain it’s morally repugnant for giant pharmaceutical corporations to be psychologically targeting children with their advertisements. But, at least we can see that this country has been taken over by the wrong “people” / corporations. We need a return of a government “by and for the people,” and we need to get rid of the government that thinks corporations are “people,” and is by and for the corporations, rather than the actual people. Because a government run “by and for” psychopaths is a sick government.
