Sarah’s take on the commercials is hysterical, but the ads alone are often comical with women kicking away signs of irritability and moodiness, and cartoon girls diving into pools. “We all know that birth control pills are 99.9 percent effective at preventing pregnancy. But did you know there is a pill that can do more?” says a woman on a Yaz commercial.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Unfortunately, Yaz did do a lot more. And it’s hardly a laughing matter. The one-time best selling birth control pill is linked to serious injuries and death in many young women, and the lawsuits against the pill’s maker, Bayer, are mounting into the thousands. Plaintiffs say Bayer was aware that Yaz could cause serious health problems such as blood clots, heart attacks, strokes and even gallbladder problems but the drug company failed to adequately warn women. Instead, the drug company ran playful commercials that overstated the drug’s benefits and downplayed its side effects.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) came down on Bayer for the misleading commercials and ordered the company to remake and rerun ads on Yaz. The new ads clarified the drug’s approved uses, which are not for mild PMS, but for the more severe PMDD, and specifically stated the pill’s risks, which includes blood clots, heart attacks and strokes.

Now generic versions of Yaz are hitting the market and Bayer is feverishly working to maintain its share of profits from the drug including launching Beyaz, a new version of Yaz that contains folic acid. Will the marketing materials for Beyaz admit they are just as “safe” as Yaz? Only time will tell.

SOURCE: Yaz Lawsuit › Parody of BCP commercials does not diminish safety concerns

“Even though I’m old, I don’t want the horrifying side effects of aging to prevent me from doing what I love,” Haskins, who just turned 30, jokes. “I want to walk with canoes, peel oranges, play fetch with my pup, and do stuff with horses,” she says while a montage of images pulled from actual television drug ads plays. In one of the ads Haskins shows, anatomy takes the form of bouncing water balloons; in another, people are made of pipes. After all, cute, cartoon-like illustrations help lighten ads for drugs that pose very serious side effects for some people.

Amusing as Haskins’ Target episode is, it effectively illustrates just how outlandish and just plain silly some pharmaceutical advertising can be.

It’s also not the first time that Haskins has featured drug commercials on Target: Women. Last year, she spoofed big pharma television ads for birth control drugs, noting how they are touted as a way to have fewer periods more than anything else.

“Fewer periods! Yay! Now we don’t have to leave the tribe and go sit in that hut for a week. That was a bummer,” Haskins says.

Drugs developed for one thing but marketed as a treatment for something else is a common ruse employed by some pharmaceutical companies to make their products more enticing. Negative disclosures about the drugs, such as the legally required information about side effects, may be washed out with distracting music and visuals. That was how Bayer advertised Yaz last year, before the Food and Drug Administration cited the company for false and misleading advertising and ordered a redo.

“You may have seen some Yaz commercials recently that were not clear. The FDA wants us to correct a few points in those ads,” the presenter in the revised commercial says.

The Yaz advertisements spawned a number of video skits lampooning the drugmaker’s claims and the style in which they are presented: a group of girlfriends in a lively bar discussing side effects in a way that would never happen in real life. One woman, who says she “didn’t go to med school for nothing,” gives her friends an off the cuff and very clinical rundown of the drug’s risks while her friends listen intently.

Inserting herself into this scenario, Haskins asks “Does anyone think Stephanie is acting super weird right now?”

For all the risks attached to some blockbuster drugs, it’s good to see that the absurdity of drug advertising isn’t sliding by unnoticed.

SOURCE: Yaz Lawsuit › Comedian lampoons the absurdity of drug ads