Are you taking Zetia or Vytorin? The manufacturers would like to confuse you further.

Are you taking Zetia or Vytorin? If so, the manufacturers would like to confuse you further.

Here is how they intend to confuse you through full page ads in the Times, Bergen Record and I am sure in many other newspapers.

Are you taking Zetia or Vytorin?

If so, you may be worried about recent news stories questioning the benefit of these medicines... on the basis of a single study that has generated a lot of confusion.

In fact, ZETIA and VYTORIN (capitals supplied by advertiser) have been proven to lower LDL (bad) cholesterol along with diet in multiple clinical studies involving thousands of patients...

All of us at Merck and Schering-Plough proudly stand behind the established efficacy and safety profiles of ZETIA and VYTORIN (capitals supplied by advertiser).

Well that clears up the "confusion" -- NOT!

Calling this mess the "confusion" reminds me that the Chinese call the massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989 the "unpleasantness."

The "confusion" stems from the suppression by all of those guys at Merck and Schering-Plough of the single drug study which called into question efficacy and safety profiles of ZETIA and VYTORIN.

The need to please explain why they hid the results of this study? We the public and Congress are all "confused" about that!

As long as we are looking at their "clarification" advertisement, perhaps they can please explain how ZETIA and VYTORIN lower your diet! That is what a sentence claims as published in this ad with the contorted drug industry syntax:

In fact, ZETIA and VYTORIN (capitals supplied by advertiser) have been proven to lower LDL (bad) cholesterol along with diet...

The correct syntax of this sentence would reveal to us that diet is at least as important as drugs in lowering cholesterol:

In fact, along with diet, ZETIA and VYTORIN (capitals supplied by advertiser) have been proven to lower LDL (bad) cholesterol ...

One last thing. The ad uses terms like "multiple," "thousands," and of course, "all of us..." - "All of us at Merck and Schering-Plough proudly stand behind..."

If this ad is their idea of coming clean to do damage control, these drug companies are truly and hopelessly lost in the maze of their own dissembling.

Accordingly Advertising age wrote the following, January 21, 2008:

Vytorin Ad Shame Taints Entire Marketing Industry
Cholesterol Drug's Ad Campaign Turns Into PR Nightmare, Fanning Flames of Public Mistrust of DTC
By Rich Thomaselli

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AdAge.com) -- The video shows the oh-so-familiar commercial for cholesterol drug Vytorin, in which benign-looking "aunts" and "uncles" are dressed up to look like platefuls of fatty foods. What's different, however, is the voice-over: "Nobody knows if Vytorin is safe or effective, but with enough scientific fraud, we can sure make it looks like it is," says the narrator in the YouTube parody.....

The ad parody starts about 75 (1:15) seconds into the video.