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Summary Of The Mega-Marketing Of Depression In Japan

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Humankind is always making improvements. Fire was discovered for warmth, and now humans have heaters that keep them even warmer. The shadows told people what time of the day it was, and now it can be found out instantly by looking at phones or watches. Many innovations have a positive impact on humans. However, there are some cases where it is not, or at least there isn’t a black-or-white categorization for it. These ideas can be seen through the close reading of the essays “The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan” by Ethan Watters, which focuses on the progress of the company GlaxoSmithKline spreading their antidepressants, and “The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food” by Michael Moss, which focuses on the progress of the quality …show more content…

In the case of the companies and their products in both essays, a negative aura surrounds the alleged progress that the companies in both essays are trying to make with their products due to the selfish ambitions, such as profit, that they hold; this is illustrated by the steps the companies take to form and sell their products and the actual effectiveness of it. In order for the products of the companies in both essays to be truly impactful to the general public, companies must first understand their potential customers, although the evident intentions for understanding the customers doesn’t shed a positive light on the companies’ products. In Watters’ essay, he notes that a conference of brilliant minds was assembled to help the drug company GlaxoSmithKline understand why Japanese people don’t regularly take antidepressants for depression and how to sell their specific drug. The main point of the conference is presented as, “GlaxoSmithKline needed help solving a cultural puzzle that might be worth billions of dollars” (Watters 516). The fact that Watters mentioned that it “might be worth billions of dollars” signals that Watters believes that money is the company’s main goal. If Watters believed that …show more content…

Watters’ text exhibits this attitude in certain passages, such as the part about the Japanese making GlaxoSmithKline retest their drug. Watters’ summation of the company’s attitude towards retesting is that, “No doubt that annoyance at having to retest drugs was so intense because a couple of recent large-scale human trials of SSRIs in Japan had failed to show any positive effects” (Watters 524). Referring to testing as an “annoyance” hints that Watters interprets that the company would rather do without the testing. Testing is necessary to enforce that antidepressants are effective. It defeats the idea of maximizing health if it’s true that the company thinks it’s bothersome to make sure that their drug works to the full potential that they describe. In reference to this “annoyance,” describing this feeling as “intense” suggests Watters sees that the companies have a firm dislike for wanting to test. Watters continues on with his point by saying, “Instead of considering the meaning of such results, the drug company executives railed at Japanese testing practices, calling them second rate” (Watters 524). The specific mention of the word “instead” at the beginning of his argument makes it seem like the course of action that he continues on to state was an obvious and correct choice that the companies blatantly

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