2.7 million views on the YouTube video with many millions more watching it as it aired.
It’s obviously being joked about here but the levity with which this drug and just one of its serious side effects are discussed is disturbing. Some choice parts screen capped here:
While of course nobody should take medical advice from a comedy show, the message here is a disturbingly misleading one, one often repeated despite having no grounding in reality and it goes something like this:
“If your sex drive is at 90%, finasteride may lower it to like 70% - you’ll still be functional and you’ll keep your hair. Happy days!”
In light of comedian Andrew Santino’s revelation on the Joe Rogan Podcast that TV station CBS censored his criticism of Accutane because the drug’s makers, Roche, sponsored CBS, I searched to see if Merck sponsored NBC, the channel which broadcasts Saturday Night Live. According to this, they do
Source is unverified but it appears genuine http://online.fliphtml5.com/bqjb/rmft/#p=1
I’m not saying that because Merck gives large sums of money sponsoring NBC nightly news, it then has the sway to influence an NBC SNL bit but this part of the video sure does read like an advert for the drug
“I gotta say, Propecia then doesn’t really sound that bad”
“It’s not. It’s crazy, it’s really crazy. If you’re ok with like, having sex once a day then you could have your hair for the rest of your life”
Some might say “but they acknowledge downsides so it’s not a positive endorsement of Propecia”. This clip is from 2017. By then it was well documented in mainstream consciousness that finasteride caused sexual dysfunction in some consumers. By reframing it as “eh, you’ll just want sex once a day instead of five times”, it disarms those concerns and makes it seem like it’s not a particularly big deal, especially to men concerned about their hair loss and unsure about the drug.
Pete Davidson, once engaged to pop star Ariana Grande, is a regular on SNL and has featured in several MTV shows. His recently released movie “The King of Staten Island” has been a huge success on a number of streaming services.