Consumercidal Happenings

SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS
Sufferers of DSACDAD's reported such symptoms as worrying about life, feeling tense, restless, or fatigued, being concerned about their weight, noticing signs of aging, feeling stress at work, home, or finding activities they used to enjoy, like shopping, challenging.

Australian artist Justine Cooper has created a biting parody of the pharmaceutical corporation tendency to "disease monger" --that is, to market a common human situation as a disease state, and to present the 'solution' in the form of a (often profitable) pharmaceutical. The form of the parody is a website and associated multimedia that promotes a new 'disease' and its pharmaceutical solution.

Although a parody, the website (which is accompanied by mock television and print ads as well as billboards) is such a close mimicking of pharmaceutical marketing that it appears to have convinced some that the mock condition/treatment is real.

The non existent disease that Cooper concocted is called "Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder" or DSACDAD, and the drug to treat this grave condition is "Havidol" (generic name "Avafynetyme HCL", which can be taken orally or via suppository).

The website, http://www.havidol.com , is permeated with subtle (and some less-than-subtle) jokes, such as the following:

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION
Problems can be avoided if you take HAVIDOL only when you are able to immediately benefit from its effects. To fully benefit from HAVIDOL patients are encouraged to engage in activities requiring exceptional mental, motor, and consumptive coordination. HAVIDOL is not for you if you have abruptly stopped using alcohol or sedatives. Havidol should be taken indefinitely. Side effects may include mood changes, muscle strain, extraordinary thinking, dermal gloss, impulsivity induced consumption, excessive salivation, hair growth, Co-dependency with inanimate objects, markedly delayed sexual climax, inter-species communication, taste perversion, terminal smile, and oral inflammation. Very rarely users may experience a need to change physicians.

Talk to your doctor about HAVIDOL

SELF-DISCOVERY THROUGH HAVIDOL
HAVIDOL helps sufferers see that no matter how much they have, more is always possible.

FEELING BETTER IS NOT ENOUGH
Guidelines established by the Lifestyle Institute for Quality and Quantity Research (LIQQR) stress the importance of continuing DSACDAD therapy indefinitely to minimize the chance of renewed suffering due to relapse or recurrence. If you start to think, "I can handle this without the help of medicine," you are not alone. Many people make the mistake of stopping their medicine once they begin to resume their lifestyle...

I've heard some things recently about "HAVIDOL and sociopathology". Where can I get more information about the social effects of HAVIDOL?
HAVIDOL does not increase antisocial behavior in the patient. It may decrease the patient's sense of moral responsibility or social conscience. There is little documentation to support this claim other than the observations of those not undertaking treatment with HAVIDOL.

A Yahoo media story below gives more detail:

[More:]

(source http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070216/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_drug_fake )
Fake drug, fake illness -- and people believe it!
Fri Feb 16, 11:56 AM ET

A media exhibit featuring a campaign for a fake drug to treat a fictitious illness is causing a stir because some people think the illness is real.

Australian artist Justine Cooper created the marketing campaign for a non-existent drug called Havidol for Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder (DSACDAD), which she also invented.

But the multi-media exhibit at the Daneyal Mahmood Gallery in New York, which includes a Web site, mock television and print advertisements and billboards is so convincing people think it is authentic.

"People have walked into the gallery and thought it was real," Mahmood said in an interview.

"They didn't get the fact that this was a parody or satire."

But Mahmood said it really took off over the Internet. In the first few days after the Web site (www.havidol.com) went up, it had 5,000 hits. The last time he checked it had reached a quarter of a million.

"The thing that amazes me is that it has been folded into real Web sites for panic and anxiety disorder. It's been folded into a Web site for depression. It's been folded into hundreds of art blogs," he added.

The parody is in response to the tactics used by the drug industry to sell their wares to the public. Consumer advertising for prescription medications, which are a staple of television advertising in the United States, was legalised in the country in 1997.

Cooper said she intended the exhibit to be subtle.

"The drug ads themselves are sometimes so comedic. I couldn't be outrageously spoofy so I really wanted it to be a more subtle kind of parody that draws you in, makes you want this thing and then makes you wonder why you want it and maybe where you can get it," she added.

Mahmood said that in addition to generating interest among the artsy crowd, doctors and medical students have been asking about the exhibit.

"I think people identify with the condition," he said.