Pills, Pedlars, Profits, and Power

This article examines pharmaceutical advertisements found in five Australian medical journals, published over a period of ten years (1978-88). The advertisements studied are located in professional journals distributed free of charge, or as part of an association subscription, to a limited audience of doctors or health professionals. The central questions asked include: how advertisements construct 'reality'; how ideology and meaning are produced within the advertising discourse; and how gender and subject are constructed in this process. The aim is to examine the phenomenon of advertising and its practices; and to deconstruct elements of functioning capitalism, its ideological constructs and the hegemonic practices of powerful professionals and profit-making transnationals.