Do you know what A1C stands for? I’m guessing that my American friends and family do, but my British family probably do not, and my Canadian friends and family might but probably don’t. I do not know what it means, but when I watch any TV channel from the US, I am subjected to their advertising and several of those ads refer to A1C or some other initialized ailment and they assume that I understand.

My awareness of this knowledge or lack of it is because American pharmaceutical companies don’t only sell their wares to doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies. They also sell them to the general public. That doesn’t happen with media in the U.K. or Canada. We are relieved of the burden of understanding complex health problems and potential remedies. Americans, sadly, are thrust into that inscrutable world whether they like it or not.

Not only are they subjected to ads related to illnesses and medical tests about which they may know nothing, they are also expected to understand all the jargon and abbreviations being used. Many of these advertisements reduce medical problems to initials, and none of them explain what the initials stand for. Unless you are familiar with the initialized ailment you are left wondering. What does that stand for? Do I have that problem? If I have some of those symptoms, what do I do?

The responsibility that goes along with this knowledge is troubling. I can imagine a lot of people seeing these ads and thinking they might have an illness they don’t have, and/or going to a doctor and asking for the medication they don’t need. After all, most of these ads suggest the viewer “Ask your doctor about… (named drug).” But then, that is almost certainly the intention. Make everyone insecure enough that some, probably many, of them ask their family physician for a drug they saw on TV.

Adding to their questionable marketing plan is the pharmaceutical industry’s interaction with the world of advertising. The ad that inspired this blog post has a jingle that is annoyingly engaging. The people who wrote it must be very pleased with their success, although I am guessing some of them are about my age. The song uses the phrase “[Named drug] is really swell,” but I haven’t heard anyone use the expression “swell” to mean “great” for decades.

To add to my conviction that the ad creators are getting on in years, that same ad is set in a town square that is reminiscent of song-and-dance movies of the fifties. People are actually dancing on the wall around a huge water fountain and I expect Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly to join in at any minute. The whole thing is very odd, but as I think about it now I suspect I am among the target audience. That small town friendly country vibe is aimed at people like me.

But I digress. The creativity behind these adverts is relatively unimportant when compared to the fact that they exist at all. Ordinary non-medical audiences should not be subjected to the insecurity that goes along with worry about health issues, no matter how jolly the messenger may be. I don’t know what A1C stands for and until my doctor tells me I need to know, I prefer to remain ignorant.