One current event, which has caught my attention, is the current investigation into the Pfizer commercial sponsoring Lipitor. Dr. Robert Jarvik creator of the artificial heart endorses the commercial for Lipitor. You’ve all undoubtedly heard one of Dr. Jarvik’s commercial endorsing Lipitor as the drug of choice and showing him perform rigorous activity which gives a great deal of credit behind the commercial. Some parts of the commercial and Dr. Jarvik’s role are coming under criticism from congress and are now being investigated by a congressional committee. The committees main concerns are that Dr. Jarvik is shown endorsing the drug, but that he currently doesn’t practice medicine, which keeps him uninformed about current medicine. Also as a doctor his specialty was not in cardiology, which doesn’t really give him the knowledge and inner workings of the heart. If you were having heart trouble you wouldn’t just go to see any regular doctor to have your problem fixed you’d go to see a cardiologist because that’s his specialty. Another concern about the commercial shows Dr. Jarvik rowing a boat. He says that Lipitor allows him to take up rigorous activity such as rowing. Actually the part of the commercial, which features Dr. Jarvik rowing a boat, is actually done by a stunt double. Dr. Jarviks entire role in this commercial is somewhat inaccurate. Because he’s a doctor and also creator it gives the audience the appeal of ethos when really his credibility in this matter is not much. It’s almost like having a company, which makes tires tell you which brand of oil to buy. Dr. Jarvik role in these commercial is somewhat dishonest and diminishes the integrity of all others in his field.
The topic I would like to talk about is the current writers strike occurring in our entertainment industry. The current strike involves The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and the entertainment studios that create television shows, movies and almost all aspects of our entertainment industry. These entertainment studios create capital by paying to produce a movie or a TV show and then distribute and sell it for profits based on a writers script. Writers get paid for the scripts they create for TV shows and movies. Recently the entertainment studios have discovered that a great deal of their shows and movies have been pirated on the Internet. To combat this loss in profit the entertainment studios created websites were online viewers can watch shows for free, and the companies receive profit from the online advertisers. The large corporations have also started selling movies on websites like Itunes and Amazon for immediate download. At the beginning of the third quarter of the fiscal year these entertainment studios boasted about how the profits from this new program had bolstered revenue and create enough profit to lift the price of shares by a great deal. Upon hearing about how their work was generating more profit, writers demanded that they be fairly compensated, but the entertainment studios refused to agree. Currently members of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers have lost over 106 million dollars in revenue. While, it is has been calculated that the entertainment studios in Los Angles are losing 20 million dollars a day. This loss in overall profit is because neither side wants to back down. The writers currently have more to lose because their wallets are not as deep as those of the studios. For now it’s just a waiting game to see who can stand in the boiling water longer. My hopes are with the writers because you shouldn’t let anyone muscle you out of what is yours.