The other day I went over to my parents to watch the Michigan game, yes the Michigan game. (not the Michigan State Game) They were playing Michigan State and I was expecting them to take more of a beating than Roy Moore. However, as luck would have it, the Wolverines prevailed and it was the rare occasion where Michigan fans could hold their heads high. I guess Michigan is a basketball school after all. Jim who? Anyway, while I was watching the game with my dad a commercial for Opdivo came on, I believe it is Latin for worst drug ever. What caught my attention was the following statement “Can cause your immune system to attack normal organs and tissues in your body which may become serious and lead to death.” A list of the other side effects stated in the commercial are as follows:
- chest pains
- Severe Stomach Pain
- Swollen ankles
- Constipation
- Shortness of breath
- excessive thirst or urine
- Diarrhea
Sign me up for that, what’s the co-pay? I’m totally in especially if it somehow causes me to have diarrhea and constipation at the same time. The truly troubling thing is that at the end of the commercial it said “these are not all the possible side effects of Optiva.” If they put all of those in, what did they leave out? Can yo imagine putting this commercial together and deciding what to include in the copy for the advertisement? Ok the organs being attacked by your immune system isn’t great but it is not nearly as bad as what we discovered in our clinical test, test subjects actually had their sphincters fall out when they were taking a dump, but we paid them a nominal amount of money and the waiver they all signed is air tight, air tight I tell you. Hold on, you didn’t tell me about that, that actually happened? Yeah, a lot. Well, FDA rules only allow us to keep one major side effect out of the advertisements so I guess we are going to have to leave the possibility of death in our commercial.
Granted, facing death will cause people to endure almost anything, but I would imagine having your liver, heart, and lungs attacked by your immune system can’t be worth the extra six months of time you buy on this earth. What’s somewhat unique about this advertisement is it actually tells you what it is meant to treat. Many of the pharmaceutical commercials out there don’t even mention what the purpose of the drug is. Obviously, there are some drugs that don’t even need to tell you what they are there to cure. If only attractive people who are in their late forties to early fifties comprise the commercial it’s a boner drug. You know what would solve most of the ED in America? If guys got to shag the chicks in the boner commercials. If you actually believed the commercials, ugly people don’t have sex. However, that can’t be the case because 75% of the population is undatable.
I have watched a lot of tv in my time and seen a lot of commercials peddling prescription drugs. Most of them leave the consumer completely clueless as to what the advertised drug is for and if they may actually need it. Hey Doc, I saw this really cool commercial the other day for a prescription drug and everyone in the commercial looked really happy and healthy, can you get me some of that? What’s the name of the drug? Amberen, it looks like a real game changer Doc! Last time I checked you weren’t a 50-70 year old women going through menopause, so I am going to have to deny your request. There is an old saying that curiosity killed the cat, I can tell you what actually has killed a lot of cats, being a cat, but is this the creed that drug advertisers are going by when they create their commercial? I have got a terrific idea, lets do an advertisement with a lot of people in a field full of daisies basking in sunshine as we describe our drug and list the side effects. Shouldn’t we tell the consumer what the drug’s purpose is? No, why would we do that? We cast a lot bigger net if we attract every single person who is in need of a prescription drug, let them find out if they need it or not by doing their homework and contacting their doctor.
It may seem strange to some that I am devoting a blog to prescription drugs until you find out my back story. Prior to attending law school I stumbled upon an Advertisement in the Grand Rapids Press looking for subjects for a drug study at Upjohn, I don’t remember if I signed anything precluding me from writing or speaking about the experience but here goes anyway. I called the number listed (this was before Craig’s List and when people actually used the newspaper to attract attention, not just light campfires). Ultimately I made the cut and ended up staying at Upjohn for a clinical trial that lasted 11 days. During that 11 days we were not allowed to leave the building and had to eat the food they provided us. I smuggled in pop tarts and some other tasty treats knowing I was going to be eating hospital food which would likely be unpalatable. We were housed in a four story building but we were relegated to one floor. The building had a rooftop deck that we called the cage because it was fenced in entirely, it even had a wire fence roof. They let us go up to the cage once a day and the only way we could get exercise was by walking the halls. Each room had four people staying in it, and most of the participants were college students, although there were a small contingent of people who were rumored to do this for a living. One of the guys I was bunking with claimed that one of these so called professional human gunna pigs was caught on a previous study washing his ass in the sink, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense since we had showers, until you met the guy, then it made complete sense.
I managed to make it through the entire 11 days with my sanity and cashed in for I want to say $1100, which in todays money would be at least $1150. It doesn’t seem like a lot, but when you are stuck on the floor of a hospital for 11 days eating smuggled in pop tarts you don’t spend a lot of money. Did I take my money and run? Hell no, I signed up for another study that was 45 days and paid $3800. However, the problem with this study was the fact that we were now approaching spring time and being confined to what surmounted to a hospital floor for an extended period of time was going to be torture. There was a lot of outpatient stuff that had to be done, but there was also a four day stay and then to conclude the study we had to stay 11 days. The drug we were testing was an HIV drug, this was when HIV still morphed into AIDS and killed people. (I actually had someone ask me if I had AIDS when I told them about the study). I think there were almost 40 participants to start the study, but they started dropping like flies as the study progressed. Looking back it’s a bit troubling that the people were being taken out of the study because their ticket to getting out of the study was irregular liver levels. One of my buddies who was in the study with me got the heave ho midway through the final 11 days, lucky bastard, he still received all of his money. Unfortunately for me, due to a lot of practical use of my liver, my readings never sky rocketed and I made it all the way to the end of the study. On the plus side, they did give me a bonus check for having such a kick ass liver. Ultimately, I think there were only five or six of us who made were able to proudly cross the finish line. Yeah Me!
One would think that that was the end of drug studies for me, little did I know that the entire economy would take a dump upon my graduation from law school due to the Dotcom bubble bursting and I would have to lease my body to science a couple more times to make ends meet as a I scrounged for one of those highly sought after lawyering jobs. In the fall prior to receiving my bar results I was in a drug study testing a Parkinson’s drug. It may have been that study or another study where they had to do hourly blood draws one of the nights, this required them to wake you up on the hour every hour to take your blood. Guess what, they don’t get the best nurses for the night shift blood draws. The particular nurse assigned to that night shift was north of 75 and her hands were about as steady as the value of bit coin. Pretty much every nurse I had during these studies commented about how great my veins were and how easy they were to find (on my arm, this may be hard to believe but I never used this as an opportunity to make inappropriate comments about my penis). For some reason Florence Nightwatch had a hell of a time finding my veins, I’m blaming it on her cataracts. Not sure if it was Florence Nightwatch, the deplorable conditions, the threat of walking in on someone washing their ass, or all of the above that may have caused me to snap, but at some point I was removed from the study, it had nothing to do with the state of my health and everything to do with my attitude. I think they actually paid me in full but moving forward I was blacklisted and would never take another experimental drug, at least one that needed FDA approval, ever again. Being kicked out was bittersweet, I never like failing at anything, but in hind sight what I regret the most is that I didn’t have the where with all to eat a pop tart on my way out the door.
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