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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31759 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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Every once in a while I'll get random YouTube pre-rolls for very vague pharmaceutical ads that are generally targeted at LGBTQ communities. Entire ad campaigns that are purely aspirational and don't even mention what the drug is supposed to do. I'm thinking there might be a bit of an info bubble where people in those communities have a decent idea about the different drugs as products and it's more about establishing brand identity. More recently at my office in the break area where all manner of magazines are left lying around I noticed a full page advertisement in a similar vein (Men's Health May-June 2022 issue, pg41 so not that old). Effectively the same as the first page of this brochure.

While it was at least more straightforward about the purpose of the drug, the ad campaign slogan "detect this" and the 2017 "U=U" (Undetectable = Untransmissible) campaign (bonus CW, Fauci is apparently a big promoter) both seem to have a similar info bubble. In this case slightly different. I can understand how for people who are very aware of HIV and fret about things like detectable viral load then the messaging of undetectable being functionally untransmissible is more along the lines of "X rights are human rights" slogan.

But did anyone involved consider how a normie might parse "undetectable" in conjunction with HIV? That it might convey a sense of other people not being able to find out about the infection, even when those "other people" include partners? Which is not some hypothetical, the pull quotes from an article about a paywalled research article. Meanwhile an AMA Journal of Ethics article looking at the merits and drawbacks (reads like a position paper but apparently it merits peer review) didn't even consider whether or not attitudes about disclosure could be a drawback. Of course duty to disclose is itself an ethical question, so whether or not a campaign affects whether or not people fulfill it can be sidelined by not considering either of those questions relevant.

Not my circus, not my monkeys but from the outside I feel like the possible implication of encouraging sneaky fuckers who cannot be caught because they cannot be detected (especially since consent and disclosure get heavily emphasized in other areas of sexual ethics) might be a bad thing. And I'm sure there have been heated conversations about it internally but the polished, pharma+government+activist PR campaigns present a rather unified picture and criticism is hard to find (U=U also has terrible SEO and typed out is equally generic). From the U=U campaign presser I linked, here is how the opposition is presented:

But what about the naysayers? Those who don’t believe in U=U or have concerns? Some were contacted and declined to comment. However, Gina Brown, an activist from New Orleans who is living with HIV, says, “In the beginning I had some reservations about this message. I wasn’t really sure how it worked. To me it was almost too good to be true. I didn’t want to give PLHIV the wrong information or information that could get them into trouble. [Editor's Note: Louisiana is a state that criminalizes the intentional exposure of another person to HIV/ AIDS through sexual contact. But, despite the language in the statute, Louisiana courts have found that neither the intent to transmit HIV nor actual transmission is required. See hivlawandpolicy.org/states/louisiana]. You would think that I’d be an initial believer; after all, I had a daughter who was proof that treatment works. I was on 076 [the study demonstrating that giving AZT to pregnant moms and babies cut the risk of transmission by two-thirds], plus the fact I’d been in a relationship where we made a conscious decision to not use barriers and the guy never acquired HIV. I was undetectable during that time, as I am now. I happened to meet Bruce Richman in Florida at USCA [the U.S. Conference on AIDS] and we had an in-depth conversation about U=U. He told me where I could find credible information that would spell U=U out clearly. I devoured this information, joined the U=U Facebook page and became a member of the U=U Steering Committee. I am a true believer that if a PLHIV is undetectable they cannot transmit the virus. That’s why it’s important that every PLHIV have access to this information and the medications that makes U=U a possibility in their lives!”

A few years back, maybe 2017, I was driving and halfheartedly listening to the local radio. FM, nothing too exciting, just a slightly more original music playlist. The second or third ad in a break was for a drug. They listed a couple vague effects followed by more specific side effects. And then kept going. And going. It was probably 20 seconds of plausible side effects before I realized—I couldn’t even remember if they gave a drug name.

I’m fairly sure this was purely a joke, though I never heard anything similar on the station again. There was no punchline, no credit given to a radio show. It just...delivered this cascade with a straight face. And it worked, because medical advertising has an alien and perverse style which cries out for parody.

So...yes. Brand recognition by implication is a thing, and medical ads are already niche enough to border on the incomprehensible.

They might have aired a portion of "Unedited Footage Of A Bear"

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