Photo by Cynthia Larsen
Should Product Warnings Be Applied to Everything?
Call your health provider if I’ve written about this before
By Ed Goldman
Watching a barrage of TV commercials for drugs on CNN, which were occasionally interrupted by newscasts, it occurred to me that the product warnings and disclaimers that follow each spot are almost as long as the spot itself.
Each ad warns how the product it’s just spent 30 seconds touting the benefits of could also cause numerous side effects, including death (I’m not joking). To cover themselves, the drug makers urge you to see your physician if you experience some of these effects—or, more pre-emptively, to see if the particular product “is right for you.”
A sell-by date?
I’m going to go out on a limb here and humbly suggest that if a product can kill you, it may not be right for you. I’ve also suggested in prior columns that they should include this tip: “Call your doctor if you think you’re dead.”
Why don’t these three other things we use, buy or encounter in daily life come with equally dire warnings?
POLITICAL CANDIDATES. “Warning, this candidate, like anyone seeking public office, is telling you he cares very much about you and will straighten out Washington D.C., your state capital or city council with good, honest candor should you elect him. He won’t do anything of the sort. From day one he’ll start planning his reelection. And when he knows he’ll be termed out, he’ll start talking to other officeholders, also facing term limits, about swapping jobs. The candidate will also cart out his lovely wife or husband and adorable kids and maybe include footage of them sharing hot dogs at a baseball game or singing in church. Please be advised that if this candidate were to so much as walk into a house of worship, any denomination, he would spontaneously combust.
“Call your doctor if you think seeing someone spontaneously combust might cause you depression.”
AUTOMOBILE SALESPEOPLE. “Warning, this fellow or lady wearing enough cologne to cause even a blue whale to get lightheaded, does not actually ‘personally own’ the car they’re trying to sell you. Nor do they have a ‘manager’ in an office you can’t see with whom they’ll have to check to see if your offer, trade-in or financing plan other than the auto dealership’s will be acceptable. This person will insist you drive the car off the lot today despite your assurances you’ll pick it up tomorrow, because once you do drive away, they’ll no longer be responsible for the precipitous plunge in the car’s monetary value nor the scrape on the back hood they managed to guide you away from during your visit. Check with your psychologist if you already have a perfectly fine car and are simply giving in to the impulse of having something newer and shinier than your neighbors’, friends’ or in-laws’ cars sitting at your curb.”
HOUSEKEEPERS. “Consumers should be advised that this housekeeper’s references will come either from dead people, non-existent people or people whose last names they forgot to bring along and can’t seem to recall. Note that they’ll pile and stack things up beautifully—books, flatware, pillows—and pronounce your place much tidier than before they’d arrived. It would behoove consumers to also count how many bottles of liquor are in your cabinet, drugs in your medicine chest and cigars in your humidor before and after your housekeepers do their magic. If you think you’ll trap them by leaving a $20 bill in a silverware drawer to test their honesty, be prepared for the bill’s disappearance and the housekeeper having no idea what you’re referring to. If they’re very clever, they’ll quietly drop the purloined bill on an entryway table as they leave, then, halfway out the door, whirl around and say, ‘Wait! Is this the bill you lost?’
“Consult your physician, psychologist and local utility service if you think you’ve just been gaslighted.”
Ed Goldman's column appears almost every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. A former daily columnist for the Sacramento Business Journal, as well as monthly columnist for Sacramento Magazine and Comstock’s Business Magazine, he’s the author of five books, two plays and one musical (so far).
