WSchmitt_Annotation8and9_MitmanChapter6Notes

Mitman Chapter 6 Some notes part of our presentation: All About the Profit  -making you part of the “tribe”  -pg 209 Mitman refers to his son and him in the third person “Keefe and his parents can also feel good knowing that the new Flovent HFA inhaler no longer contains a chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) propellant--a part of GlaxoSmithKline’s ‘corporate commitment to the phaseout of CFCs’ and an aspect of its environmentally friendly face.” A sarcastic, sneering comment about the marketing-based focus of drug companies  -drugs aren’t about survival, but about all kinds of other leisures, athletics, and performance enhancing  -Golden Age of Marketing – 1950s  -off-labeling – putting a new name on the same product to make more money in different markets  -Cold War – maybe not a fight against the cold but over who gets the money off of it  -Physicians feared prescription drugs would be OTC – less doctor visits  -Drug Companies wanted drugs to be OTC – more drug sales  -The public didn’t care either: if it worked in some way, then why should they care about menial matters of whether the cold was allergenic or virus-based, or if it had side-effects.  -Doctors began moving towards addressing the entire environment around an asthma sufferer while drug companies pushed for more focus on drugs instead  -Another huge push by pharma industry to make drugs OTC in the mid-to-late 80s  -National Asthma and Allergy Awareness Week – way to advertise industry-pushed marketing  <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Didn’t know about the side effects: <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> -London Bronchodilator Inhaler 1968 catastrophe – asthma deaths <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> -Addiction to inhalers became common <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> -One woman took a dose every few minutes <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> -Much easier to shoot a dose of a drug than to address environmental triggers <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> -“Out of sight, out of mind.” – about the body and not understanding/caring about what was going on inside the body that they couldn’t see <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> -Steroids causing hearth and other body issues <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> -Not knowing the full extent of AntiHistamine <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> -“The cumulative effect of other drugs is less obvious” (210). <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> -(229) no “scientifically acceptable” study had been done about the true nature and effect of antihistamine against the common cold. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“Technology tells us one thing about our bodies when they are standardized against a population norm, but our experience tells us another.” (211) Really shows the anthropology in Mitman <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">