For sure. The commercials I hate the most though are things like feminine products or pharmaceuticals that they take most of a 30 minute slot reciting all the terrible side effects that are possible if you take it or Geico's gecko commercials--I like a lot of other Geico commercials. And the Burger King king and the Travelocity character annoy me just to look at them and I can't tell you why.
I hear you. Those are pretty bad too. Now, the recitation of the terrible side effects are a Food and Drug Administration requirement. You can be sure that if the Pharma companies weren't forced by the FDA to disclose them, they'd never mention them, and would depict the rosiest of pictures for their medications.
By the way, direct Pharma to consumer advertising is absurd. There are only TWO countries in the world that allow it (as far as prescription medicines are considered; over-the-counter ones can be advertised in some other countries): the United States of America, and New Zealand. All other countries allow Pharma companies to advertise to doctors, but not to consumers. What do consumers know? Doctors spend twelve years studying these diseases, their treatments, and risks and benefits. Lay people have no freaking clue, so they shouldn't be addressed by ads.
It's the doctor's obligation to educate the patients on different choices and their comparable risks and benefits. But it's the doctor's responsibility to pick the best options to present, based on their learned expertise. Lay people who have not been to pre-med college, medical school, and residency training, simply do not have the expertise to be asking the doctor "is Xarelto good for me?' Patients should not try to pressure doctors into prescribing stuff for them that they saw advertised on TV. It takes 12 years to learn about these things, not a TV ad.
Well, at least, the FDA, probably in a guilty trip for not banning all direct-to-consumer medication ads, at least forces the companies to disclose the side effects.
But ideally, these ads should not exist at all, like in all other 200 nations in the world.
