Question: Erin Brockovich on Freedom to Advertise Consumer advocate Erin Brockovich has a well-deserved reputation for confronting corporate giants, and in her online newsletter she recently took aim at the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline and its popular anti-diabetic drug Avandia (rosiglitazone). Referring to a major scientific study in the New England Journal of Medicine, which found that Avandia substantially increased the risk of heart attacks and strokes, she said, "Some Avandia patients won't take their medication. Some Avandia patients have an increased risk of heart attack. Some people take Avandia and have heart attacks. Some of them die. Some of them didn't have to." Such provocative claims, coupled with the fact that Brockovich advertises on the Internet, have led critics to warn against "the dangers of attorney advertising in drug litigation." For example, a posting on PointofLaw.com, a web magazine sponsored by the free-market think tank Manhattan Institute, said that "drug litigation is about trial lawyer profits, rather than public health. Indeed, a Google search for Avandia turns up eight or nine ads from trial lawyers asking people to blame Avandia for their heart attack and inviting them to sue." "Drug litigation is not about trial lawyer profits," says Brockovich. "Drug litigation is about empowering the tiny voice of the consumer against the fat cats of industry. Victims have a right to be heard. Victims have a right to have ‘megaphones' so their voice can be heard; and trial lawyers are the personification of megaphones. . . . [ articles that seek to curtail attorneys from advertising on the Internet] are trying to quell rights, and what is more shameful than that, especially in a free and ethical society? "Remember in the Wizard of Oz, how Dorothy announced herself? ‘I am Dorothy, the small and meek.' "Come on people and take off the blinders! It is no coincidence that thousands on Avandia now have heart attacks. Don't they have a right to be more than a petulant Dorothy trembling-and dying-at the feet of the Great and Powerful pharmaceutical companies?"
1. What is Brockovich's argument here? What/who is she for and against in advertising and why? Explain.
2. Do you agree or disagree with her arguments? Explain.