YAZ-zle, not so dazzle

Magnet #343 - FDA

Who says that DVR people don't watch commercials?

Supposedly, folks watching a DVR'd program tend to FF through the commercial pods, but will stop if something they see interesting fly across their screen.

But me? I have this ridiculous habit of forgetting that what I'm watching is on DVR, so I forget to FF. And then about 45 minutes in, I'll realize that I could have saved myself 15 minutes. Sigh.

I did that yesterday, and saw that new YAZ commercial that's apparently on heavy daytime rotation on network tv.

I wouldn't have noticed it at all, were it not for the opening lines: "You may have seen some YAZ commercials recently that were not clear. The FDA wants us to correct a few points in those ads."

Whoa. Looks like someone got in trouuuuuble. Actually, I looked it up. The FDA cited Bayer because they thought the commercials were misleading, something about them implying that YAZ would alleviate all their PMS syndromes, when it doesn't.

There's a part of me that says that the FDA and Bayer called more attention to themselves by running the clarification spots when it's quite possible that no one cared enough in the first place. Of course, I also wasn't running around thinking that YAZ really made any PMS symptoms go away - it's birth control, not a miracle drug.

But, whatever, I'm certainly not debating an ad that should have been cleared properly before airing in the first place. After all, this is a magnet blog.

And to that end...dudes. Does the FDA really get that many requests to identify orphaned drugs that they not only need an 800 number, but a handy magnet to boot?