Anyone who watches television will have noticed the proliferation of advertisements promoting the products of the pharmaceutical industry. The networks are literally clogged with them. More to the point, there is something, to my eye, rather sick and strange about the nature of these ads. While the pharmaceutical industry will most probably claim that the drug ads are informational, and intended to educate the public, I suspect there is another dimension to them, as well.
I cannot imagine that the pharmaceutical companies have not done an exhaustive analysis of their promotional strategy. Since they are an industry that is part of the medical establishment, it is impossible for me to imagine that they are not aware of the psychological aspects of both human sickness, and the medicines that treat it. Therefore, they have had to be fully cognizant of the impact that their drug ads would have on the fairly significant segment of the population that is highly suggestible, and has a propensity for psychosomatic illness.
Consider these 21st century pharmaceutical advertisements carefully; their content, repetitiveness, and suggestible tone. The drug companies' executives surely have, and having done so, cannot help but be aware that their ads, by design, are creating an unhealthy market for their products among a segment of humanity that cannot psychologically defend themselves against such advertisements.
This is a fairly pathetic example of why the fruits of science alone are not enough to advance the cause of humanity. Knowledge without altruism is just a loaded gun in the hands of the emotionally immature people who wield it. If this sort of destructive product promotion is an example of how the pharmaceutical industry intends to (ab)use science, then the comparison made in this painting, between the pill and the grave marker, is accurate.