Thanksgiving Meal in Pill Form

It was the morning of Thanksgiving Day and everyone in our house was watching the Thanksgiving Day Parade in Times Square on television. It seemed like a great family thing to do and it was for the most part. However, it only took a few commercial breaks to pick up on a disturbing pattern. CBS had apparently sold about half of their commercial time to pharmaceutical companies. Every commercial break had at least one lengthy commercial that attempted to convince Americans that they were well within the given statistic of people suffering from one illness or another. All of the commercials are the same with people smiling and feeling great and explaining how their problems have been solved by the regular dosage of this new medication. Of course, it doesn't show any of these people smiling through any of their listed possible side effects.

Speaking of the side effects, one of these commercials was promoting a new medication for people that have leg cramps. Of the listed possible side effects that this medication can have was "gambling and sexual urges". What does this mean? And what in the world did they put into these pills to cause such a reaction? Did the control group that they tested these pills on all wind up playing strip poker? Did they test the drug on dogs first? Is that how they wound up with those silly paintings?

Another listed possible side effect was dying. How does death find its way into a list of side effects? There's nothing "on the side" about dying. That's pretty much the focus of the problem, I would think. The leg cramp sort of becomes a moot point, right? I wonder how many people out there dying wish that all they had was a leg cramp. Not to mention the people out there who are uncontrollably dehydrating from chronic diarrhea and severe vomiting. I'm willing to bet that these people are wishing for a leg cramp, too, and yet people with leg cramps are popping these pills and apparently having these very side effects.

Jodi was appalled at some of things that were said and decided to write CBS a complaint. Ironically, about half-way through writing her message CBS ran a commercial for an upcoming CBS Evening News with Katie Couric. The top story that they were advertising the show with was "Teens Abusing Prescription Medications". Talk about a hypocritical television station. They'll sell all of their commercial space to the top bidders: pharmaceutical companies. And then they'll attempt to get you to watch their news shows by reporting on the very problems that they are helping to create. I'm surprised that these pharmaceutical companies want to advertise on their station, or maybe that's why they want to. Maybe it's similar to a mud-slinging political campaign.

Either way, I find it horrible that CBS would do this. Television is just not good to watch anymore. We actually had to convince Jacob that he didn't need Lunesta. He saw that pretty butterfly on the commercial and turned around to tell us that he has trouble sleeping and needed some of those. I guess , judging by the success of Lunesta's distribution, that a frightening amount of adult Americans are still running around with a seven-year-old's mentality.

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