Healthy Skepticism Library item: 8609

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Last Laugh: Better living through chemistry
The Age (Melbourne) 2007 Feb 20
http://blogs.theage.com.au/entertainment/archives/2007/02/last_laugh_bett.html

Full text:

Internet hoaxes are continuing to fool folks around the world – even when they’re not actually hoaxes. Australian artist Justine Cooper currently has an exhibition showing at the Daneyal Mahmood Gallery in New York. The exhibition takes the form of a marketing campaign for a drug, called Havidol, which is a treatment for Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder (DSACDAD).

Both the drug, and the disease (as you may have guessed), were made up by the artist. The exhibition includes fake advertisements and a fake website, and according to a Reuters report, many people believe the campaign is real.

“The thing that amazes me is that it has been folded into real Web sites for panic and anxiety disorder. It’s been folded into a Web site for depression. It’s been folded into hundreds of art blogs,” Daneyal Mahmood said.

The campaign parodies the way some pharmaceutical manufacturers market their drugs.

Check out the rather amusing web site for Havidol here. I reckon it’s pretty clever, though, yet again, I’m amazed anyone could think it was a serious site.

It is slightly scary that in the US, where advertising prescription drugs is legal, people actually believed the campaign was real, despite slogans such as “When more is not enough”. Read the Reuters story on Havidol here.

What do you think? Could you use some Havidol to “bring about positive change without you having to recognize exactly what your problem is”? (There’s a test on the site that will tell you if you may need the drug)