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The issue of drug security has come to prime time. In the past week, two popular TV shows have suggested to audiences that prescription drugs may not be as safe as once believed.

Law & Order's episode "Fluency", which aired January 19, depicts a career counterfeiter passing off pallets of saline solution as flu vaccine. The products are packaged and labeled as injectible vaccines, raising little question about their authenticity. In the story, nine people die. The prosecution argues that while the saline solution itself may not have killed the nine, it did leave them unprotected from influenza. It gave patients, many of whom are at the highest risk of catching the flu because they are elderly or suffer from chronic illness, the false belief that they were protected. Although the episode did not blame the drug maker, it did show the audience that the once seemingly invulnerable medical establishment is vulnerable. Detailed and sophisticated supply chain tracking and tracing mechanisms, however, could make it far less vulnerable.

Next was the new hit, Desperate Housewives. In "Your Fault," which aired January 23, a pharmacist decides to tamper with the prescription for Rex Van De Kamp. After a heated exchange with Rex regarding his estranged wife Bree, the pharmacist opens Rex's previously filled prescription and discards the contents. Rex says he will come back later to pick up the prescription, and the audience is left to suspect that the pharmacist is planning something sinister. It's too bad that the majority of the viewing audience is unaware that with packaging direct from the manufacturer, Rex would be safe from an angry pharmacist.

This is TV, of course, not breaking news. But the real story here is that pop culture is starting to question drug safety, even if it is just entertainment. Symbols of trustworthy care—the official-looking drug vial and the white-coated pharmacist—are now subject to questioning.

So should the pharmaceutical industry whip into action just because a couple of TV shows suggest there is risk? Maybe. Big pharma obviously knows its customers are watching TV, given the continuous stream of direct-to-consumer drug advertisements. But will fears planted by the entertainment industry pressure drug makers to make the investment needed to protect their products? We hope.

Viewers have tuned in to these shows to live out their fantasies and fears. Chances are they will be gabbing to friends or in chat rooms about the episodes, not the ads. Maybe they will even begin wondering whether the vaccine they just got or the prescription they just picked up could have been compromised. Unless pharmaceutical companies have already reassured them through, of course, security packaging or labeling.