Pennington 1

Megan Nicole Pennington

Nov. 2014
Advertisement: Appearance vs. Reality and Credibility
Everyone who has watched television is familiar with advertisements for prescription drugs;
most of them follow a similar pattern. First, there is a portrayal of a persons life with a disease or
handicap. Next, the company tries to sell you a drug that appears to completely change your life for
the better. This advertising is effective despite the annoying spokesperson listing off the dozens of
possible side effects at the end of the ad. While the government closely regulates ads for
pharmaceutical drugs, there remains some amount of ambiguity, exaggeration, and advertising spin.
Most consumers are aware of misrepresentation and exaggeration in advertisements, but many
consumers believe that the pharmaceutics market is clean and straightforward with no deceit. This
leads to numerous consumers that buy into prescription drugs without much analysis of whether or
not the drug helps more than hurts, how dangerous it is, and if the drug is even necessary to benefit
their health. Shire Pharmaceuticals LLC manufactures the popular drug Adderall that is used to treat
ADHD. While Shire claims to have its patients best interests at heart, the companys lack of truth
and integrity in its advertising, promotion, and education about the mental disorder and the drug
prove that Shire doesnt live up to the standards one might expect after hearing its stated goals,
ethics, responsibilities, and interests.
In advertising, people can expect at least a small amount of exaggeration or ambiguous terms.
For example, many food companies promise to use only natural ingredients, but there is no standard
of what natural means; this can lead to the question, natural as compared to what? What qualifies
as a natural ingredient? These sorts of meaningless promotions in advertisements may seem to say a
lot about the product at first; however, upon closer inspection, it is clear that they are saying nothing
specific at all. These tricky advertising tools are just one part of what creates the identity of a
company. According to author Frank Luntz, The company persona is the sum of the corporate
leadership, corporate ethos, the products and services offered, interaction with the customers,
andthe language that ties it all together (428). However, not all aspects of all companies personas
align. Many companies portray themselves and may appear to be a company that is reliable, serves
products of high quality, or that has their consumers best interests in mind. Nevertheless, their
actions, communications, and quality of their products compared to what they claim can sometimes
prove to be the opposite of the image they portray.
In the mid 2000s, when Shire Pharmaceuticals LLC first began producing and selling its
eight-hour version of Adderall, the companys advertisements were targeted mainly at adults. Some
of the ads targeted mothers of school-age children with behavioral problems while other ads targeted
adults with problems themselves. One magazine ad, published in 2005, depicts a child with his happy
mother and reads, Finally! Schoolwork that matches his intelligence [/] family hours that last for

Pennington 2
hours [/] Friends that ask him to join the group. The ad seems to portray Adderall as a drug that will
make children get good grades in school and have less behavioral problems. In an ad from 2008,
there is a picture of a newly married couple with the wife cut out with a giant red stamp over it that
reads, DIVORCED, and underneath it reads, Because adults with ADHD may have a lot to
lose (Schwarz). Although it says in small print that there was 13% more people divorced who
claim to be diagnosed with ADHD vs. non-ADHD in a test of 500, it can be argued that Shire is
scaring adults into believing that they will get divorced if they go without treatment. In both ads,
Shire neglects to mention that several things, such as lack of sleep, usual child behavior, or poor diet,
can cause ADHD symptoms like the inability to focus and complete tasks. These ads are misleading
consumers to believe that the drug will always result in good grades, better personal relationships,
and will prevent divorce. The ad from 2005 also states that Adderall was generally well tolerated in
clinical trials and only mentions the least severe side effects of the drug (Schwarz). This is a vague
statement and causes readers to believe that the drug worked well for everyone. While this is true for
some, Adderall can cause psychological problems, heart problems, or mood swings in some
patientsall of which are possible side effects that the company does not mention. Shire claims on
its website that its goal is Taking an ethical and responsible approach in the best interest of [its]
patients However, Shires language in its public advertisement is misleading and shows the
company does not promote the drug in the interest of helping people affected with ADHD; Shires
interests lie in spreading the social anxiety that comes with the possibility of having a mental
disorder and going untreated in hopes of getting more people to become prescribed to it and buy it
(Shire - A Global Innovator).
Shire spends a lot of money on promoting their drug to both consumers and doctors. When
the eight-hour version of Adderall was released in 2002, Shire held a meeting with seventy doctors to
educate them using a PowerPoint slideshow on the benefits of Adderall to their patients. The New
York Times journalists obtained a copy of this slideshow. Alan Schwarz of the NYT writes,
Slides described side effects of Adderall XR as generally mild, despite clinical
trials showing notable rates of insomnia, significant appetite suppression and mood
swings, as well as rare instances of hallucinations. Those side effects increase
significantly among patients who take more pills than prescribed.Another slide
warned that later in life, children with A.D.H.D. faced job failure or
underemployment, fatal car wrecks, criminal involvement, unwanted
pregnancy and venereal diseases, but did not mention that studies had not assessed
whether stimulants decreased those risks.
Shire was not able to prove this information to be true with any factual information. Alan Schwarz
from the NYT quotes Dr. Aaron Kesselheim of Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston who
writes, advertising influences doctors prescribing practices.theyll tell you that theyre giving
patients unbiased, evidence-based information, in fact theyre more likely to tell you what the drug

Pennington 3
company told them, whether its the benefits of the drugs or the risks of those drugs. The false
advertising and misleading claims made by Shire to the doctors can be harmful to the doctors
patients by depriving them of important information and supplying them with false information about
the drug. The U.S. Department of Justice quotes a U.S. Attorney General who warns that, regarding
children, "Marketing efforts that influence a doctors independent judgment caninterfere with a
parents right to clear information regarding the risks to the safety and health of their child On
Shires website, the company states that it is committed to ensur[ing] our interactions with health
care professionals are appropriate, compliant, and consistent with our mission to support patients. In
Shires promotion to doctors, it deliberately disregarded the entire factor of safety and health of their
patients, revealing the company is not entirely focused on honesty and transparency with health care
professionals and patients as the company states. Shires true motive is revealed to be to diagnose as
many people as possible with the disorder and get them on the treatment by advertisement anxiety
and gloss over the health risks so they continue to buy the drug for the rest of their lives.
The misleading information Shire promoted and the false claims it made regarding its drug,
Adderall, prove that the companys motives are unethical and do not align with its depiction of itself.
In the pharmaceutical realm, this kind of deceit can prove to be dangerous to patients health and
well being. As declared by the U.S. Department of Justices Office of Public Affairs, a lawsuit was
filed by an individual on behalf of the U.S. government against Shire, resulting in the companys
payment of $56.5 million to the government and certain states for the damage Shires fraud caused.
The company violated the False Claims Act with unsupported claims that Adderall would prevent
poor academic performance, loss of employment, criminal behavior, traffic accidents and sexually
transmitted disease. Additionally, Shire violated laws by promoting their drug for the treatment of
conduct disorder without approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). A spokesperson
from the agency said that the Department of Justice will continue to hold drug companies
responsible for seeking to boost profits using false and misleading claims about [their] products
Although the companys false statements were not exploited by the Department of Justice itself, the
changes resulting from the lawsuit that have been made to Shires previously deceitful
advertisements and false claims are an example of the efficiency of the regulations enforced on false
advertising and misleading information (Shire- A Global).
Shire Pharmaceuticals LLC may appear to portray itself as dedicated to the well being of its
patients and the quality of the products it manufactures, but the actions and language the company
uses in advertising, promotion, and education of its products reveal Shires bigger interests:
increasing their sales for a bigger profit in order to keep the companys investors happy. Shires
neglect to properly inform its patients can cause serious heath problems; with federal laws in place to
prevent this false advertising and deceit, the dangers of such consequences are minimized.

Pennington 4
Works Cited
Luntz, Frank. "Be All That You Can Be: The Company Persona and Language Alignment.
Language Awareness: Readings for College Writers. Ed. Eschholz, Paul A., Alfred F. Rosa,
and Virginia P. Clark. 11th ed. New York: St. Martin's, 2013. 427-433. Print.

Schwarz, Alan. "The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder." NYTimes.com. The New York Times, 14
Dec. 2013. Web. 19 Oct. 2014.

Shire - A Global Innovator in Specialty Biopharmaceuticals. Shire Pharmaceuticals LLC, 2014.

Web. 19 Oct. 2014.
United States. Dept. of Justice. Office of Public Affairs. Shire Pharmaceuticals LLC to Pay $56.5
Million to Resolve False Claims Act Allegations Relating to Drug Marketing and Promotion
Practices. US Dept. of Justice, 24 Sept. 2014. Web. 5 Nov. 2014.