So I’m watching tv the other day when, as usual, I’m bombarded with some sort of television ads for some new prescription medication, which just confuses me in the first place.  I thought doctors wrote prescriptions for something that would work best…I didn’t know we had the power to go in and solicit our doctors for the drug with the best ad campaign.  Kind of makes it like shopping for pills, with our favorite brands being based on the happiest television actors.

Anyways, the ad made me realize a major flaw with each one of these commercials…the fact that the pharmaceutical companies have to read off all potential side effects.  Now, putting side effects on a label…these are usually skipped.  But having an announcer read them on a tv commercial kind of makes them stick out.  Nothing’s more terrifying than watching a couple skip through a grassy field with big smiles on their face as a narrator says “Abdominal bleeding, anal leakage, blurred vision, dizziness and tremors, sexual problems…”

That happy couple doesn’t seem so happy anymore.  Wait a minute…what do you mean blurred vision?  That couple just ran threw an enchanted forest, and neither one of them ran straight into a tree.  And I can understand dizziness, but “tremors”?  Are underground creatures from a bad ’90s movie just a part of taking a new medication?

If they really are just forced to read these side effects for full disclosure by law, they should use something a little more engaging than a couple running around doing happy things while the people watching the commercial imagine the two of them with anal leakage and abdominal bleeding.  Maybe they could put a jumble or a Wheel of Fortune puzzle up on the screen for people to solve while they’re running threw the list. 

“A *blank* in hand is worth *blank* in the *blank*?  Hmmm….I know I know this, I just have to think.  Wait, did they say “brain decay” was a side effect?  I’ll worry about that later…I have to get this puzzle.  A bush in the hand is worth two in the bush?  Damnit…”