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Abstract
The pharmaceutical industry has increasingly come under attack because of the rhetorical methods used in its advertising. The tensions informing what is seen as a crisis of irresponsible rhetoric influencing scientific process can be traced back to the Classical tensions between rhetoric and philosophy, and an examination of these tensions leads to a clearer understanding of division between the body and the self that is presented in many current advertising campaigns. When analyzing the rhetorical strategy used in modern pharmaceutical advertisements and theoretically examining the origin of the concepts which are presented and sold to consumers, an overzealous faith in scientific promise and the dichotomies it offers is shown to account for modern attitudes toward sickness that cause patients to view the body as an enemy which suppresses the self. Only when the body and self are considered as inseparable will consumers be safer from the manipulations of pharmaceutical advertising.