To The CEO’s of Valtrex

I live in CA and I cant stand your commercials anymore! I see them on TV and in magazines.

If your company wants more customers, why don’t you focus on the real spreaders of genital herpes–those who don’t know they have it. If you are going to bother advertising to everyone that 70% of people who contract genital herpes contract it from someone who isn’t showing any signs or symptoms, why not mention that most people DON’T!!!!

In fact, you’re unlucky if you get even one “classic” outbreak of blisters/sores, let alone recurrent “classic” outbreaks. 90% of the people who have herpes, don’t know it. A lot of people have initial outbreaks so slight they don’t notice or they think it is something else like a yeast infection or ingrown hair.

Doctors don’t test for it on standard STD panels and most people don’t want to get tested because its such a stigmatized virus. Only HIV has a higher stigma.

So I suggest to you

STOP spreading the herpes stigma!! The stigma is what makes people with herpes “suffer,” not the outbreaks. The statistic you use makes it sound like those with genitals herpes are just waiting to give it to someone who doesn’t. Heck, if you include the 90% statistic you’d have a whole heap of new people getting prescriptions for Valtrex.

I sincerely hope you listen to this

This letter was sent to me to post on this blog because the person who wrote to GlaxoSmithKline did not receive a response from them and they thought my blog would be a good platform for such discussion.

If you would like to comment on what you think of the Valtrex Commercials and what GlaxoSmithKline might do to improve them, send me your thoughts OR leave a comment.

Read about what others think of the Valtrex Commercials

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