Pharmaceutical companies are writing the script for health consumerism

Communication Design Quarterly Sep 2015

Pharmaceutical companies are writing the script for health consumerism

Scott A. Mogull ; Deborah Balzhiser

Abstract

In this rhetorical analysis based on the Foucaultian constructs of power in medicine, specifically the docile body, the medical gaze, and health consumerism, the authors examine ways the pharmaceutical industry used web-based direct-to-consumer advertising, from 2007-2010, to craft interactions between U.S. consumers and physicians in ways that changed the traditional patient-physician relationship in order to drive sales of brand-name therapeutic drugs. We demonstrate how the pharmaceutical industry uses its websites to script power relationships between patients and physicians in order to undermined physician authority and empower patients to become healthcare consumers. We speculate that this shift minimizes or even erases dialogue, diagnosis, and consideration of medical expertise. We suggest that if it is important to uphold values of the modern version of the hippocratic oath, it may be necessary to provide physicians and patients additional parts in the script so that medical decisions are made based on sound science, knowledge, and experience.

Journal: Communication Design Quarterly
Published: 2015-09-17
DOI: 10.1145/2826972.2826976
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Topics: multimodality

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