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How Drug Ads Try To Make You Remember The Good, Forget The Bad

(Molly Ferguson/STAT)
(Molly Ferguson/STAT)

It’s rare to watch television these days and not see an ad for some kind of prescription drug: Viagra, Cialis, Zoloft, Prozac, Nasonex, Spiriva, the list goes on. Always, those ads include a rattling off of potentially dangerous side effects, something drug companies are required by law to include.

Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson talks with Megan Thielking, a reporter with the national health and medicine publication STAT, about the different strategies those companies – and the voice actors they hire – use to distract you from those negative side effects, or make them harder to process.

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