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Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
For the most part, the celebrities don't mention their sponsor or its product by name, but instead urge people to go and see their doctors about the latest treatments, or, in the case of Turner, suggest that viewers or readers visit a specific Web site that offers information about a condition.
This approach allows the drug companies and their celebrity hires to insist that they're doing a public service, not to mention providing the public with compelling human-interest stories and sneak peeks inside the private lives of movie and television stars. But some will acknowledge an ulterior motive. "Well, sure," says Immunex's Shapiro about the Kathleen Turner campaign, "the more people who know about rheumatoid arthritis, the more people who go to the doctor's office and find out about our breakthrough treatment."
These awareness campaigns also happen to be a way for the drug companies to avoid the remaining FDA regulations on TV advertising of prescription drugs. In a straightforward television commercial for a drug, viewers must be told about the drug's major side effects or be directed to another source -- a Web site, or 800 number, for example -- where they can get further information. Awareness campaigns are exempt from these restrictions because the FDA doesn't consider them to be advertisements. Thomas Abrams, who monitors marketing by the pharmaceutical industry for the FDA, says the agency would only take action against a drug company if the star employed by the company greatly exaggerated a drug's benefits. Otherwise, Abrams says, celebrities, like any other citizen energized by a cause, are free to say whatever they please.
On May 23, 2000, actress Olympia Dukakis appeared on the Fox News channel to talk about her mother's battle with post-herpetic neuralgia (PHN), a debilitating condition brought on by shingles. Her mother "would sit muted in pain," Dukakis told viewers. "She couldn't even touch her hair. That's how painful it can get." Dukakis then went on to say that others need not suffer like her mother did, that there are new, better treatments out there. "In fact, there is one solution," she said. "It's called lidocaine or lidopatch."
PHN sufferers who went to their doctors and asked about lidocaine or lidopatch would have found out that there is only one drug Dukakis could have been speaking about, Lidoderm. Lidoderm is a patch that right now is the only formulation of lidocaine approved by the FDA to treat PHN. It also happens to be manufactured by Endo Pharmaceuticals, which was paying Dukakis to do the Fox interview. "Yes, she was compensated," says Sherri Michelstein, who was hired by Endo to organize the media campaign. (Endo and Dukakis' representative both declined comment).
Of course, the television audience never learned about Dukakis' ties to Endo. "The tireless actress is constantly on the move," Fox anchor Paula Zahn said in introducing Dukakis. "But now, she's set her sights on helping to ease the pain of more than a million Americans."
By mid-1999, pop singer Carnie Wilson weighed close to 300 pounds and was, as she later told an interviewer, "desperate." She felt depressed, suffered from diabetes and a sleep disorder, and was barely able to get her 5-foot-3 frame in and out of her car. Her career had largely been on a downward spiral ever since the breakup of her rock group Wilson Phillips.
It happened that her former manager, Mickey Shapiro, had started a health-related Internet company whose board of directors included surgeon Jonathan Sackier. Sackier suggested to Wilson that she undergo gastric bypass surgery, which meant having her stomach stapled down to the size of a fist so she couldn't eat as much. (Wilson also has said that Roseanne Barr urged her to consider the option.) Wilson not only agreed -- she volunteered to let Shapiro's Internet site broadcast the procedure live.
Over the next three years, Wilson became the nation's poster child for the benefits of gastric bypass. "Since the surgery, I feel lighter, I feel sexier -- inspired," a 150-pound Wilson told People magazine (and many other media outlets) in April of 2000. People did a total of three stories on Wilson, two of them front covers. She was also interviewed on ABC's "Good Morning, America" six times and on the news magazine "20/20" five times. Asked once why she chose to go public about her obesity, she said, "It's just -- if it can help people, then I'm happy to do it."
