The Great Medicine Show

The phony doctor (in real life a member of Actors Equity) slips into a white smock, faces the camera, and the biggest gasoline-torch medicine show in history has begun. A cigarette is soothing to the T-Zone. A miracle pill will start the natural flow of liver bile. Try a certain elixir for worn-out blood--and a toothpaste for a brave new cavity-free world.

Last week the Federal Trade Commission, admonished by the U.S. Senate to watch more closely for "false and misleading" TV advertising, announced that it would begin monitoring radio and TV commercials for the first time (heretofore the FTC has merely scanned scripts picked at random).

Outright warfare between the American Medical Association and the networks over "quack M.D.s" ended three years ago, but there have been brief skirmishes ever since. Under the terms of a 1953 code drawn up between the A.M.A. and the National Association of Radio and TV Broadcasters, any commercial featuring a phony Dr. Kildare requires an accompanying announcement making it clear that the medic is really a greasepainted TV actor. Recently, however, sponsors have dropped the qualifying "disclaimer" or have found means of skirting the principle of the code; e.g., just before the show goes off the air, comes a vague rider: "Portions of tonight's commercials were dramatized," a device not likely to destroy the listener's faith in the pince-nezed pitchman with the stethoscope.

There are other ways of bypassing the code, which stipulates that a broadcaster "should not accept advertising material which describes or dramatizes distress," e.g., commercials showing muscles throbbing with pain. Also questionable is the indiscriminate use of such words as "safe," "without risk" and "harmless." Broad casters also often resort to pseudo-pharmaceutical names or impressive "scientific" terms that the average viewer may not understand ("If you're tired from lack of thiamin and riboflavin . . ."). Others relate doctors and celebrities to a product by innuendo.

A sampling of the kind of commercial --heard on both the big networks and local stations:

P:"Two tablespoons of liquid Geritol . . . contains twice the iron in a pound of calf's liver. Don't let TIRED BLOOD drag you down."

P:"Medical science has discovered a healing medication called Preparation H. It shrinks hemorrhoids without surgery!"

P: "Javitol contains 85% choice coffee blends, combined with a vegetable extract that lets you literally drink that extra weight right off your body. Can you imagine?"

P:"Dormin is the original, genuine, non-habit-forming, safe sleeping capsule, so safe no prescription is needed ... you 11 sleep naturally"

P:"Rem is the only cough medicine compounded of its 14 medically approved ingredients, works through the upper chest and bronchial tubes to ease that tight feeling, help break up phlegm and wheezy congestion."

P:"Infra-Rub speeds up the flow of fresh, rich blood, thus helps drive away pain-causing pressure."

P:"This doctor's discovery is called bus-tamin 2-12. Doctors of three leading hospitals personally witnessed amazing results. They saw agonizing, crippling pains relieved day and night."

Probably the bitterest battle is being fought between Carter's Little Liver Pills and the FTC. Since IQ43 the commission has been after Carter's on grounds that the product is nothing more than an ordinary laxative, with "no therapeutic effect" on the liver. The case has been endlessly dragged through the courts is still unsettled. Last week FTC again demanded that Carter Products, Inc. drop the word "liver" from the brand name. Sample Carter commercial: "Five New York doctors now have proved you can break the laxative habit . . . Carter's Little Liver Pills improve the flow of liver bile needed for natural regularity."

Some physicians are so disturbed that they go out of their way to explain TV's excesses to patients. "Advertisers warned one A.M.A. spokesman, should not forget that the public is not so lastingly gullible as they seem to believe.

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