DVD Review:

 

Side Effects: A Look into the Drug Industry

 

Review by Dawn Brunke

 

 

Side Effects Written and Directed by  Kathleen Slattery-Moschkau, 2005.    Starring Katherine Heigl.    For more, see www.sideeffectsthemovie.com

 

A few years after graduating from college with a degree in political science, Kathleen Slattery-Moschkau was recruited to become a sales representative in the pharmaceutical industry. She was amazed—what did she know about selling legal drugs? Just as her counterpart, Karly Hert (played by Katherine Heigl) in the not-so-far-from-reality Indie film Side Effects portrays, Slattery-Moschkau discovered she was chosen more for how she looked than what she knew. She also found that the benefits of working for the industry—a company car, fat expense account, gifts from manufacturers, not to mention a healthy salary and bonuses—made it difficult to “just say no” and quit.

 

However, like Hert portrays in the film, Slattery-Moschkau did come up with an intriguing solution: to tell the doctors the truth about what she was selling. This led to yet another surprise, for even when flat-out denying the superior efficacy of her company’s drugs, Slattery-Moschkau was shocked to find that her sales soared. “It was like the more direct and more honest I was, the more they respected what I had to say,” she said in an interview with USA Today.

 

Side Effects is part expose, part drama—a compelling conglomeration of facts (offered documentary-style throughout the film), fiction (the marketing of a fictional antidepressant drug called Vivexx), love story, and snippets from Slattery-Moschkau’s own experiences during her 10 years as a pharmaceutical sales rep.

 

Although Side Effects is a low-budget film (Slattery-Moschkau turned down a Hollywood offer that entailed modifying it), it is a decent, well-made movie that held my interest. It seems to offer a fair glimpse behind the scenes of both the pharmaceutical and medical worlds, such as showing overworked doctors having precious little time to educate themselves in the plethora of new drugs saturating the market. This is unfortunate, of course, but not nearly as unfortunate as the manipulations choreographed by big drug companies, whose bottom line appears to reside more with sales and profits than with the health of patients.

 

Clearly, not everyone in the pharmaceutical industry is in it for money and it is true that many drugs do save lives.  However, the film also points out the other side: that pharmaceutical manufacturers are not often completely honest in releasing data—including some very important facts, such as the number of patients who have died using certain drugs. Many times, in fact, names of the original researchers of the drugs are not included in the published reports as their findings contradict the advertised efficacy and safety of that drug.

 

Side Effects offers a well-grounded, wake-up call to all those who use (and prescribe) prescription drugs. It’s not an overly sensationalistic movie, and because Slattery-Moschkau draws from her own personal development, we also see how entangled and jaded so many sales representatives in this industry become. 

 

A bonus to this DVD is Money Talks, a documentary on the influence “Big Pharma” has on the medical profession, media, and patients. It features interviews with doctors, researchers, journalists and others in both the medical and pharmaceutical worlds.

 

Dawn Brunke is the editor of Alaska Wellness and author of Animal Voices and Awakening to Animal Voices. See www.animalvoices.net for more.