Many U.K. residents took to social media this week to express shock at the pharmaceutical ads that ran during Oprah Winfrey's March 7 interview with Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, according to a March 8 Washington Post report.
Rather than waiting a day for the British broadcast of the interview, some British viewers tuned in early on March 8 to catch the American broadcast by using VPN connections and other tech workarounds. This gave U.K. viewers a glimpse into the content of and frequency of pharmaceutical ads than run during U.S. television broadcasts.
In the U.K. and other European countries, pharma companies are banned from advertising directly to consumers on the basis that physicians should be making independent decisions about what drugs to prescribe patients instead of managing requests based on ads patients have seen on TV and are eager to try, according to the report.
Ayesha Siddiqi, a Los Angeles-based writer, gathered numerous reactions from U.K. viewers in a Twitter thread, which included tweets from British viewers such as: "Watching the pharmaceutical ads in between the interview was crazy! I'm convinced I have multiple health issues now."
Dartmouth College researchers found that pharma companies nearly doubled the amount they spend on marketing between 1997 and 2016, and sales of prescription drugs almost tripled during that same time period, according to the report.
In the U.K., the socialized National Health Service and government regulations has helped to keep most prescriptions at around a $12 cost for patients, the Post reports.