Big Pharma on TV: We Won’t Get Fooled Again
By David Talbot, columnist, The Kennedy Beacon
By David Talbot, columnist, The Kennedy Beacon
The truth is breaking out about the medical-industrial complex, despite the strenuous efforts to cancel its critics. Yes, Big Pharma has used its advertising clout to keep advocates of safe vaccines and prescription drugs off the airwaves. Critics of regulatory icons like Dr. Anthony Fauci have been ridiculed and attacked. Scientists and other experts who express concern about gain-of-function research and dangerously loose standards at laboratories have been marginalized. But the truth is spreading. It cannot be contained.
Less than 22 percent of U.S. adults have chosen to get the latest COVID booster vaccine so far, according to a January 19 report by the Centers for Disease Control, because people are concerned about the shot’s efficacy and safety.
Congressional Republicans and other critics have questioned the integrity of Dr. Fauci, who spearheaded the federal government’s response to the COVID pandemic, charging that he suppressed evidence that the virus escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China, and that he caused major social problems with his lockdown strategy.
According to a recent Gallup poll, a solid majority of Americans – 58 percent – now have negative opinions of both the pharmaceutical industry and the federal government.
It’s true – you still won’t find critics of profit-driven Big Pharma like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on most TV news shows. The pharmaceutical industry has been allowed to heavily advertise on television (even those drugs laden with life-threatening side-effects) – an outrageous practice that Kennedy has promised to end if he’s elected president. (The major pharmaceutical manufacturers spent over $4 billion last year on TV advertising and will spend up to a staggering $20 billion this year on digital media. Big Pharma is now the second largest industry in advertising spending.)
Kennedy says his favorability rating is high among all groups of voters except liberals over 65 – “the group I should do best with,” said the presidential candidate at his 70th birthday celebration in Los Angeles last week. “They’re in a media bubble. CNN and MSNBC won’t allow live interviews with me. If I only read and viewed what they say about me, I wouldn’t like me either.”
But forget about Big Pharma’s control of the major news channels. The pharmaceutical industry might own the mainstream media, but it’s losing the culture war. Just observe how Big Pharma is being portrayed these days in the entertainment world.
Last week, I watched the thriller Fool Me Once, a British-produced eight-episode limited series that rose to number two on the Netflix chart – and has stayed in the channel’s top five since its January 1 premiere – even without major stars. (I enjoy Richard Armitage and Joanna Lumley, but I don’t think of them as household names, particularly in the US.)
While I didn’t confuse Fool Me Once with Shakespeare, I found the melodrama oddly compelling. A tough but haunted former British military helicopter pilot (Michelle Keagan) suspects her sister has been murdered by the family that the veteran has married into – the dynasty that owns Burkett Pharmaceuticals – because she discovered the drug giant was selling an unsafe product. As the story unfolds, it turns out that the homicide detective assigned to the case (Adeel Akhtar) has also fallen victim to strange blackouts, hallucinations and suicidal compulsion because he, too, is taking the Burkett drug. The Burkett family is portrayed as murderous, cold-blooded and greedy.
Just like the Sacklers, the pharmaceutical dynasty behind the opioid crisis, which has now inspired such TV dramas as Painkiller (based on Patrick Radden Keefe’s bestselling book Empire of Pain) and Pain Hustlers – both also on Netflix – and Dopesick on Hulu.
Netflix seems particularly receptive to anti-Big Pharma stories. Last fall, the network featured a miniseries titled The Fall of the House of Usher, the gothic tale of a villainous pharmaceutical mogul based loosely on the work of Edgar Allan Poe.
Prominent people have even started criticizing Big Pharma and the federal government’s unrelenting messages about COVID shots. Actor Woody Harrelson “took a jab at the jab,” as the New York Post put it, while hosting Saturday Night Live last year. During his opening monologue, Harrison said he had recently read an outlandish script. “So, the movie goes like this,” Harrelson recalled. “The biggest drug cartels in the world get together and buy up all the media and all the politicians and force all the people in the world to stay locked in their homes, and people can only come out if they take the cartel’s drugs and keep taking them over and over.”
Then Harrelson delivered the punch lines: “I threw the script away. I mean, who was going to believe that crazy idea?”
The interesting thing about Netflix’s Fool Me Once is that Big Pharma’s corruption is not the point – it’s simply a plot device in the story of family betrayal. It’s kind of taken for granted that the pharmaceutical industry sometimes distributes products that are not good for you, that can even kill you. We are not shocked when it’s revealed that the family behind Burkett Pharmaceuticals will do anything to protect its corporate empire.
The greedy malfeasance of Big Pharma is now so widely known – so resented by the millions of us who have been gouged and hoodwinked and damaged – that the industry’s toxic reputation can’t help but seep into our show business dream world. Actually, this is the stuff of nightmares, not dreams.
The pharmaceutical industry can spend billions to manipulate the news. But it can’t prevent the awful truth from infecting our imaginations.
I was watching the show called Alpha Males a couple of weeks ago (which is not a right wing rah rah patriarchy show but rather a show lampooning alpha male ridiculousness). At several points in the season, characters offhandedly make remarks implying that the covid vaccines might be dangerous. In a very nonchalant way as if everybody has this thought on their mind.
I watched incredibly good, healthy, productive people have their lives destroyed or their children's lives destroyed from the opioid and psychiatric drugs that were pushed on them with the promise it would lead them to better health or less pain. Then I watched the real story unfold watching the congressional hearings and testimonies of whistleblowers who were ignored, the truth, that our own agencies and government were colluding with them and all got to bathe in the blood money profits. All conflicts of interest beyond the scope of the imagination and people need to say no when that is absolutely clear. No part of how it all works isn't riddled with conflicts of interest. Now other whole swaths of the planet's nations don't trust doing business with the anglo saxon crime syndicate as they've all figured out how the shakedown works for the global bankster oligarchs. That series you mentioned reminds me of a true story out of Canada that's never been solved that occurred not long before the magic potion was launched. Enjoyed your book.