Misleading EpiPen Ad Could Have Seriously Harmed Kids (VIDEO)
Yikes! It's not every day that I get to use the phrase Who are the ad wizards who came up with THAT one? in TWO posts, but this is apparently that day: First there was the scary demon baby breastfeeding commercial, now there's the shockingly ignorant EpiPen ad pulled for causing a huge (valid) uproar among parents of kids with severe food allergies.
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Since the commercial has been yanked, the only online evidence is a blurry clip with bad sound. But here's the gist of it: A smiley mom is driving her smiley son to a birthday party, which, she says, "Should be pretty awesome, right? Even with your peanut allergy and a cake made with who-knows-what. Because we're prepared, right Dave? We have an EpiPen."
D'oh! No, smiley TV mom, no!! A life-threatening food allergy is not a scrape on the knee, and an EpiPen is not a Band-Aid!!
If you have a child with severe food allergies, you know what I'm talking about. One bite of birthday cake could kill that smiley kid so fast his mom wouldn't even have time to get the EpiPen out of her purse. No exaggeration. A friend of mine knows a woman whose son died from eating a peanut contaminated pastry in the car: He ate one bite, and in the time it took for the mom to pull over and get the EpiPen out of the glove compartment, her son was already dead.
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I can't even imagine the horror. My 6-year-old son is allergic to peanuts, but so far he's never had any life-threatening reactions (thankfully Benadryl does the trick). Of course we have an EpiPen handy anyway, but does that mean I don't monitor what he eats? NO!
At least the ad was pulled, but the fact that it made it past the initial idea phase at all is shocking. Surely Mylan Specialty, the company that makes EpiPens, knows how risky it can be to treat food allergies so flippantly.
Do you have a child with food allergies? Does this EpiPen commercial shock you?
Image via Greg Friese/Flickr
Written by Jacqueline Burt on CafeMom's blog, The Stir.
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