Viagra is So Gay

This is so wrong.

Yes, it is wrong of me to use this expression, 'gay' to denote something about which I am really not happy, but in this case it all just seems appropriate to me. It turns out that Viagra is a principal sponsor of our gay pride activities in Montréal this year.

For those who might be wondering, Montréalers are so proud that we have two gay pride festivals, Divers/Cité (weekend ending with the first Monday in August) and Célébrations de la fierté (two weeks later). This all came about when Divers/Cité decided it didn't want to organize the community day (showcase of community organizations) or the parade, so these vital activities were taken up by a new organization. But that's not what we're here to talk about today.

My ranting is about pharmaceutical advertising. Many of us in the HIV movement have been fighting the advertising of HIV meds for a long time, for reasons that you can read about more fully here, but let me briefly summarize by saying that this is about trying to influence people to pressure their doctors to prescribe certain medications, whether or not they are the most appropriate, based on incomplete, even minimal, information. This creates frictions in the relationship with the doctor and unfounded expectations in the patient, all in the name of capturing (or recapturing) market share.

In Canada, the advertising of prescription drugs is [theoretically] restricted: you can advertise the name of the product and the name of the company OR the condition the drug is intended to treat, but never both together and never each in parallel in such a way that would establish a link between them (colour scheme, images, etc.). Some of the HIV drugs, in my opinion, have been treading close to that line or over it in recent years.

So here we go with Viagra. Now I have combed this advertising for information (pharmaceutical companies often insist that their advertising is 'patient education'), but all I come up with is gay. Rainbow, pill, talk to your doctor. Must be a pill for the gays, right?

I can't really blame the organizers of les Célébrations de la fierté when we are facing not only governments which seem to have less money for funding in general, but some of which have also decided that they don't like to fund the gay, despite our also paying taxes and all. They probably had few choices of corporate sponsors, and had to make this one to make ends meet. I'll tell you what, Mr. Harper, I'll take one fewer hideously overpriced warplane and fund the gay pride festivities across the country for several years, reaching hundreds of thousands of people.

So I have stomped about, fuming about the print advertising, coasters and street columns announcing Viagra and demonstrating how blue doesn't stand for harmony, but for erectile dysfunction (rainbow flag reference). Imagine my surprise, then, to see this same little blue pill pop up, sans rainbow, on the website I use as my TV listings.

So maybe Viagra isn't so much gay as Pfizer is desperate. Levitra anyone? Cialis?