Fake Drug, Fake Illness: A New Urban Legend Is Born

You gotta love it. An Australian artist’s multi-media spoof of drug industry sales tactics has created a new illness, and people believe that it is real.

According to a Reuters report, Justine Cooper’s fake marketing campaign for a fake drug, “Havidol,” supposedly used to treat an illness the artist also invented, "Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder (DSACDAD)," went on display at a gallery in New York.

The artist also created a Web site for the drug, which has received a quarter of a million hits, Reuters said, and real Web sites and blogs about panic and anxiety disorders are linking to it.

OK. … This piece was hanging in an art gallery, for pete’s sake. Are the hypochondriacs of the world so desperate for a new illness that they can’t recognize irony when they see it? Or art?

Read the Reuters report:
Fake drug, fake illness—and people believe it!

@ Jeanne Sather 2007.