Slashdot Mirror
Pharmacists Convince Search Engines To Self-Censor
RogueShopper writes "The National Association of Boards of Pharmacists (NABP) has teamed up with Drugstore.com in a seemingly successful campaign to 'rid search engines of ads from rogue pharmacies.' Overture removed ranked ads at the request of MSN and Yahoo!, and AOL and Google complied, also. In an apparently selfless act Yahoo! also wiped out its entire directory tree for pharmacies. Meanwhile, anyone can cross the border, walk into a Mexican pharmacy and buy whatever they want. Big busines controlling content ... hmmm ... looks like it's getting closer to broadcast television. Thank god for DMOZ.org!" (Here's Google's cache of Yahoo!'s Pharmacies list).
This is less about big business (which, frankly, profits when their drugs are bought legally with a prescription, or illegally via an online pharmacy with no prescription) and more about complying with existing laws.
There's still a lot of legal-for-research drugs (triptomines) that are fairly easy to aquire (apply for a research permit, get accepted, then you're "in"). The reason no one cares is because we're too busy dealing with pot.
Dextromethorphan has recently gotten some news, but there are many others that aren't seeing much airtime. For those who don't know, DXM is an anticongestant agent in cough syrup that, when taken by itself, has extremely potent dissociative and hallucigenic results.
It is a lot scarier than pot or prescription painkillers, since a lot of kids are drinking cough syrup in order to get the effects (and thereby introducing insane levels of other chemicals in the syrup into their bodies).
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
Let's see. Someone who know's all about the NABP, who writes in with a carefully worded spin to rouse up the typical slashdot reader.
Oh yeah, and his "news article" is hosted on "www.rankforsales.com", a search engine positioning company.
Sounds like the poster is the same guy that's always e-mailing me trying to sell me Viagra on the cheap. No wonder he's disgruntled.
MedicationAssist Granted it's only for low income people but in the Bush Economy, more and more people need help.
Jesus Christ, read the paper or listen to the radio once in a while. OF COURSE they are pushing the medicare drug coverage, because part of that bill is a prohibition on Medicare from using it's collective buying power to bargin for better drug deals !
The Democrats can't evade blame for this one either, they all lined up to vote for it.
Bargaining for price is the basis of Capitalism. Banning it is called Communism in most parts of the world. In fact, much of what the current government, Republican and Democrat, stands for is pure and simple Communism. Read more on that here.
It amazes me that someone who is at least smart enough to find the submit button on slashdot can sit and speculate about if drug companies are pushing the Medicare corporate welfare bill. But I guess that kind of blaise failure to inform oneself is what makes America what it is today !
Where are these magical Mexican Pharmacies that will sell you anything without a recipe? I'm mexican, and last time I checked, the pharmacy down the corner still required you to show a prescription to let you buy anything stronger than a cough syrup.
If the article poster meant that Mexican pharmacists are more easily bribed, well, that's another matter, and depends entirely on the pharmacy. Both for the US and Mexico.
Anyway, I think this is a good thing. Americans are overmedicated. Between Prozac, Ritalin and Valium you guys will end up a bunch of happy zombies.
Overcaffeinated. Angry geeks.