Unethics: Marketing Pills to Children
From a website for kids and marketing vehicle made by a “naturopathic doctor and mother” comes an instructional video:
This is how you use the Belladonna . . . you hold it upside down . . . then you twist . . . then you pop it in your mouth! . . . It tastes just like sugar.
Update: Its creator took Kids & Homeopathy off-line in reaction to this blog post. However, I had been careful to save a copy. Here are a couple of stills, edited to protect the child’s privacy:
“...you hold it upside down...”
“...then you pop it in your mouth!”
How many ethical issues does this raise? In my opinion, the video steps over the line by…
- Marketing medicine to children,
- Using the pills’ similarity to candy to sell them,
- Blurring the distinction between medicine and candy,
- Promoting a culture of pill-popping and keeping a medicine cabinet full of “remedies” at all times to children,
- Teaching children how to circumvent a child-safety device,
- Teaching children to self-diagnose instead of turning to a parent or guardian,
- Blurring the meaning of dangerous poisons such as Belladonna,
- Focussing on the symptoms instead of the underlying problems: Why does she have headaches frequently enough that she knows what “medication” she prefers for them? Is there some underlying problem that’s going ignored while she self-diagnoses and self-medicates?
- Marketing a disproven therapy (homeopathy) to children,
- Harming this particular child through the inculcation of these values.
Did I miss anything?
Update 2
- The video’s creator responds.
- Another problem with the video’s concept occurred to me: As can be seen in the screenshot above, the girl takes medication on camera even though she’s not experiencing any health problems. This is both questionable (further teaching that taking meds is a lighthearted & fun activity), and odd (evidence that homeopathic medications maybe really aren’t “real”.)
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Let’s take a step even further back: marketing of any kind to children is wrong. Yes, I said it. If you have a product for children, you need to market that to parents instead.
Update: the video has been removed from YouTube and the website.
I am glad the girl called one of pills a “sugar pill” because that’s probably the only or strongest ingredient.
@Marc, yeah, I thought that was pretty ironic.
I find it unethical that you have taken screen shots of a child and posted it on your blog.
@jackson Yes, I understand the point, and this is something that I’m currently thinking a lot about. I’m considering modifying the post to protect the child’s privacy.
Be aware, though, that these screen shots are not of a private family movie, but rather of a commercial YouTube video. The source is one of several similar ones made by the child’s mother that she is broadcasting via YouTube.
Yes, the key to your point is “…by the childs mother” I have gone to see the videos, and it seems that the children are having a great time working WITH their mother to create these videos. For you to take parts of that, and use them in your own context without permission is unethical, for someone who is preaching ethics, I find this puzzling.
Have you spoken to the doctor/mother? Because I’m also thinking that what you are doing here is defamation of character.
@Robb – did youtube give a rationale for why the video was taken down? it’s great!
It was removed by the account owner. She talks about it here.
Following a quick photoshop lesson, I edited the images to protect the child’s privacy.
I realize that since it’s homeopathy the “active ingredient” has been “diluted to be more powerful” but, isn’t belladonna poisonous? Or is my brain making that up?