How Were Some Of The Greatest Medical Technologies Marketed?

The modern history of medical technology and marketing are much more intertwined than one might initially expect, partly due to the two fields developing in parallel and partly due to the importance of promoting medical discoveries.

After all, if a medical breakthrough is not known about, it does not have a chance of helping people, and this makes the field of life science marketing fascinating.

Here are some of the greatest medical discoveries in recent history, and how they were presented to a wider audience.

X-rays

The history of X-rays and radiation in therapy illustrates the importance of clarity and mindfulness of the capabilities of a new medical technology concept for both diagnostics and therapy before its widespread and somewhat cavalier use.

The discovery of X-rays by Wilhelm Rontgen and especially the discovery of radium by Marie Curie, as well as its early use for treating skin conditions and some types of cancer led to a craze in the early 20th century of radiation being used to sell almost anything.

The most infamous of these was Tho-Radia, a brand of radium and thorium-infused beauty products notable for being advertised as the product of Dr Alfred Curie (no relation to Marie and Pierre) and for the striking marking image of a woman bathed in an orange glowing light.

The tragic death of Eben Byers led to a backlash against radiation therapy, although once more advanced modern techniques emerged starting in the 1950s it became known as an effective cancer cure.

In Vitro Fertilisation

Whilst not an intended marketing campaign, the birth of Louise Brown would become an example of how life science discoveries are interpreted by the press without the help of modern marketing and press teams.

Known erroneously as the “test-tube baby” by the press of the era, Louise Brown would be the subject of global media attention from the moment she was born to test what would become a pivotal moment in medical technology history. 

The procedure and the baby girl by extension were marketed as a beacon of hope for couples who were struggling to conceive, with the complexities of the process and the chances of success. 

Before Louise, Patrick Steptoe, Robert Edwards, Jean Purdy and others had been working for over a decade on development without much success.

Once it had succeeded, the framing of the procedure changed from providing hope to couples hoping to have a child to its potential for misuse, the resulting public outcry subsequently leading to the Warnock Report and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA).

It highlights the power of media reporting in medical marketing; given that medication and medical treatments cannot be marketed directly to payments, media reporting is often how new medical discoveries are disseminated.

Whilst the benefits should be celebrated, framing matters to ensure that people get a correct impression of a technology.

Smallpox Vaccine

The smallpox vaccine, and the broad success of vaccination as a whole, is less about the history of the concept as a treatment as the composition of the storytelling and mythology of its origin.

The history of smallpox vaccination is extremely complex because whilst the modern concept of inoculation was not truly known until Dr Edward Jenner’s treatment of James Phipps in 1796, variolation was already an established preventative measure for treating smallpox.

However, its successful marketing, which led to successful tests, refining of the vaccine and eventually mandatory inoculation, was based in no small part thanks to the myth of the beautiful milkmaid.

Dr Jenner claimed that his inspiration for his theory of inoculation was the result of hearing a young, beautiful fair-skinned milkmaid brag that because she had caught the much less harmful cowpox, she would never have pockmarked skin.

This is a story that was heavily promoted and published in the media sources of the age, with many cartoons and paintings depicting the mysterious milkmaid in the same manner as a classical Hellenic muse.

The reality is this is unlikely to have been the true origin, as a 2018 study in the New England Journal of Medicine argues. 

According to Arthur Boylston, it is far more likely that he heard about the variolation work of John Fewster, who found out from farmers in Thornbury who had previously had cowpox that they were immune to smallpox.

He believes that the milkmaid story was the product of John Barron, Dr Jenner’s biographer, but given that the cowpox lesions were taken from milkmaid Sarah Nelms, the connection became clear in the minds of the scientific and non-scientific community alike.

The story stuck, and it emphasises not only the power of storytelling in marketing but also the increased responsibility to ensure that any stories told do not obfuscate the truth.