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AMA Calls For Ban On Direct-To-Consumer Advertising of Prescription Drugs (ap.org)
HughPickens.com writes: The Associated Press reports that the American Medical Association has called for a ban on direct-to-consumer ads for prescription drugs and implantable medical devices, saying they contribute to rising costs and patients' demands for inappropriate treatment. According to data cited in an AMA news release, ad dollars spent by drugmakers have risen to $4.5 billion in the last two years, a 30 percent increase. Physicians cited concerns that a growing proliferation of ads is driving demand for expensive treatments despite the clinical effectiveness of less costly alternatives. "Today's vote in support of an advertising ban reflects concerns among physicians about the negative impact of commercially-driven promotions, and the role that marketing costs play in fueling escalating drug prices," said the AMA's Patrice A. Harris. "Direct-to-consumer advertising also inflates demand for new and more expensive drugs, even when these drugs may not be appropriate."
The AMA also calls for convening a physician task force and launching an advocacy campaign to promote prescription drug affordability by demanding choice and competition in the pharmaceutical industry, and greater transparency in prescription drug prices and costs. Last month, the Kaiser Family Foundation released a report saying that a high cost of prescription drugs remains the public's top health care priority. In the past few years, prices on generic and brand-name prescription drugs have steadily risen and experienced a 4.7 percent spike in 2015, according to the Altarum Institute Center for Sustainable Health Spending.
The AMA also calls for convening a physician task force and launching an advocacy campaign to promote prescription drug affordability by demanding choice and competition in the pharmaceutical industry, and greater transparency in prescription drug prices and costs. Last month, the Kaiser Family Foundation released a report saying that a high cost of prescription drugs remains the public's top health care priority. In the past few years, prices on generic and brand-name prescription drugs have steadily risen and experienced a 4.7 percent spike in 2015, according to the Altarum Institute Center for Sustainable Health Spending.
Doesn't mean they're gonna get it
But I, for one, would much rather see the personal injury attorney solicitations go the way of the cigarette advertisement.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
The bottom line here is that the entire model of drugs being researched, developed and sold by for-profit organization is deeply flawed and will continue to operate at the detriment of society.
Dont' get me wrong, I think the laws surrounding this kind of advertising need beefing up, but I like to know what's out there. It helps me have informed conversation with my doctor/provider/whateveryoucallyours. "Hey I heard about X, would that be helpful or appropriate in this situation?" because frankly, no-one looks out for my issues better than me.
On the other side, these ads are so damn misleading sometimes that they sounds like miracle drugs.
In my case I have chronic sinusitis. An ad I saw made me aware of a drug that could assist in my recovery. It seemed to be ideal for my situation and after discussing it with my surgeon he uses it in all of his patients and explained more about it. I would have never known about it otherwise.
So while I think changes need to happen to advertising, it is nice to know about drugs that doctors might overlook or don't know about. Doctors are human and not all knowing.
All of this ad money is money that could be spent taking Drs to lunch, or sending them to conferences. That's the real reason Drs are against the ad spending.
Take a look at the SEC filings of a handful of major Pharma companies. Most list 30-40% of revenue as marketing and advertising.
R&D costs are 10% and manufacturing is often negligible, so marketing costs (direct and indirect) are nearly 90%.
That's all waste that we are paying for. Marketing doesn't add value to a product. Most countries have figured that out and banned it.
"ask your doctor is "X" is right for you"
If my doctor doesn't already know whether X is right for me, then I need to get a new doctor. I've always thought that this was incredibly irresponsible to be promoting the idea that the average slob off the street should suggest treatments when you need about 10 years of post-secondary education just to be able to deliver such treatment.
"end users, ask your sysadmin if systemd is right for you."
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
Then we could also do something like the above, but for getting rid of H1B..
That is what professional associations (or 'unions' as some might call them) get you.. We should have one..
just tell their patients "no." If the patient decides to try to shop around for a different doctor, let them.
We've taken to googling the price of every drug we see. How many folks have diabetes or foot fungus, a lot....those drugs are about 20k/yr. The really narrowcast cancer drugs (what percentage of your audience has small cell lung cancer ?) are about 200k per year. I can see the desperate haranging a doc to prescribe this, even if the doc knows differently. If it isn't OTC, then it should not be advertised to the mass market. All this does is drive up prices. Oh, "if you can't afford your medication, XXXX MAY be able to help" burns me on so many levels, I hope the CEO of the company's family all need that drug, and that for them it is all "side effects". Everything wrong with the US "health" care system is shown by advertising these drugs direct to consumer.
I've got some people here that don't listen to their doctors!
NOTHING would make me happier.. I'm wearing out the mute button on my tv clicker, with all of these mindless ads for drugs with clever names, a speed-read of ......
a list of side-effects that would scare any normal person to death (hint: most have the possibilty of death somewhere in the list), and a ending with "Ask YOUR doctor if XXXX is RIGHT for YOU!!!"
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
Hey dumbass, there's a mute button on your remote. Learn to use it. Better yet turn off the fucking television when you have dinner with your family.
As long as they don't lie, they have a right to speech. Already they cram in warnings and side effects.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
In order for direct advertisements to work, doctors must be listening to their patients about treatment instead of the other way around. That sounds like a dysfunctional system to me.
Take a look at the SEC filings of a handful of major Pharma companies. Most list 30-40% of revenue as marketing and advertising.
I think that's a fair number, but it's also likely the obnoxious direct-to-customer ads are a smallish part of that.
Free medications and perks to doctors, other ad mediums, and even the annual Vegas junket are all likely marketing and advertisement expense.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
bad medicine for sure https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=wmd+medical+experiments
When the doctors are the gatekeepers of information about prescription drugs, that brings back the good old days of free dinners, all-expense-paid conferences, gifts, and hot pharmaceutical sales reps pretending to think that you're clever.
I remember when all that prescription drug advertising began and I knew it was a bad idea in 1997 and it still is today. Way too many patients walk into a doctors office demanding and getting a drug they've heard about regardless if it is the best option.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Direct-to-doctor marketing? Doctors shouldn't have 'reward' programs for recommending certain brands over others. Then again, the profit motive itself pretty much makes a mockery of the practice of medicine in general. I just don't think the promotion of "awareness" of profitable drugs that this system provides doctors is worth the corruption and fleecing involved.
Ryan Fenton
These ads are ridiculous. Most of the products don't even give you an idea what they are for. Your doctor will not be interested in prescribing anything you see in an advertisement anyway. They must be a product of the lobby groups that influence Congress. They are almost as repulsive as lawyer advertisements.
I'm a conservative libertarian but this is still ridiculous. Why allow drug companies to spend millions (and pass that on to consumers) advertising something that consumers cannot get directly.
There are alot of things that need to change about our healthcare system but this is one. The only case where consumers should be allowed to override their doctors concerns about drugs and treatments is in cases where there is substantial loss of quality of life involved. When doctors invoke the "do no harm" clause to keep someone from accessing experimental treatments or drugs when that person is terminal or in severely degraded quality of life, its ridiculous. The doctor should be required to pass on knowledge of the risk involved, but should not be allowed to deny access.
Digital is, by definition, imperfect. Analog is the way to go.
Just please drop the requirements that they have to list the side effects. Eating dinner with kids and having to listen to 4 hour erections and other inappropriate dinner subjects is outrageous.
Or just stop eating dinner while watching TV shows aimed at middle aged men like Monday Night Football, or My Little Pony.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Wow, grasping at straws here. Whims set the price of medication, advertising is what, 1% of that?
Here's your sign.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...a force of its own (and it no longer comes anywhere near to being able to say that they're the best so their system must be correct, either).
In much of the civilised world, drug companies - which already spend a ridiculous proportion on marketing - don't get to advertise directly to consumers. What would be the point? If anyone needs TV/radio/waiting room advertising to choose a drug, they're not researching properly, and certainly have no expertise over a doctor. You want to research what options are available? Speak to your doctor. Look up health resources published by academic groups, charities, professional associations, and healthcare foundations. Search comprehensive drugs databases. Read support forums for people with various conditions, remembering to think extremely critically while doing so.
But for fuck's sake don't rely on being spammed with adverts. IT pros, would you choose Windows 10 because you saw it advertised on TV?
As the great Bill Maher once said "Shouldn't your doctor tell you what drugs you need? When you tell your doctor, isn't he just a dealer at that point?"
Its a free country, let them advertise.
Being a free country doesn't mean we should do whatever stupid thing pops into our head. There are lots of reasons why we shouldn't allow such advertising.
1) These advertising costs get passed on to patients (read you and me). While I can only speak for myself I have NO interest in paying for advertising for the medicine I am consuming.
2) Furthermore this sort of advertising creates all sorts of bad incentives for patients to ask about medicines that may not be appropriate for their condition. Most people without medical training demonstrably do not understand what these drugs do nor do they understand the side effects.
3) Trust me that the doctors are already getting pestered by drug company representatives. Patients asking for medicines too serves no useful societal purpose. It's just drug companies co-opting patients to do marketing for them.
If people are too stupid to listen to their doctor, they deserve to die.
No they do not. Just because someone isn't very bright doesn't mean they deserve to die. The entire reason we require prescriptions is because people are easily swayed by fancy marketing and pseudo-science (see homeopathy) for things that don't work or even are harmful.
I figured, with all those side effects, nobody would even go near those drugs. I mean, really, are you willing to try that new drug on your toenail fungus with a risk of death attached? What that means is that people during the drug study actually died, a confirmed side effect.
In any case I think we need to stop with all these sex pills and nonsense drugs and put that money in to treating or curing life threatening illnesses. Aspirin and Penicillin were revolutionary and more beneficial than any of their very minor side effects; we need drugs like those.
WHAT?? An organization representing physicians thinks that only physicians should get to decide what drugs and devices most people hear about???? THE HELL YOU SAY!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Please shove your precious gun (I'm sure you have one) up your ass and pull the trigger.
Several times, if necessary.
You might want to see a doctor about your anger issues.
I mean don't the drug companies have the right to peddle drugs over the corporate media thought control complex? This is the first amendment after all.
On the other hand, the USA is supposed to be the land of the free. So shouldn't the populace be free to kill the executives of these drug companies that are peddling these drugs. I'm just saying, that this seems to be the free market / free society solution to the problem.
For those that point out that this would be unethical, and against the law, I would counter, that commercially available legal drugs kill more people than the illegal drugs. Out kids are dying at the hands of these legal drug peddlers who only care about profit. Don't give me this crap about the rule of law. Laws and rules mean nothing. Justice is blind, and all she can do is use her scale to see which side has the most gold.
I am against anymore laws. We need more justice.
Tired of being exposed to all the depressing info that folks should talk privately with their doctor about. Big Pharma is disgusting the way they operate.
Whims set the price of medication, advertising is what, 1% of that?
Who cares what percent of the price the advertising is? If it is greater than 0% then it is too much. I have no interest in paying for advertising budgets for drug companies.
You're neglecting compliance. Having worked at a pharma company I saw first hand huge amounts of resources dedicated to running around meeting the whim of every country's various regulatory agencies. Overhead is one of, if not the largest, cost involved.
I'm a conservative libertarian but...
From your response, it's clear that you're not. And there's no shame in shaking free of the shackles of poor ideology - or any ideology, really.
Reality is pragmatic, combining good ideas from various philosophies. Be proud to want what works, rather than sticking to labels and ghettoizing yourself into a group just to feel like you belong.
I disagree with your second statement. While we should afford doctors and patients more latitude in cases where there is little or no hope of recovery, I don't feel that we should require doctors to participate in a treatment when their training/experience tells them is an improper course of treatment. In most cases they invoke "do not harm" because they feel that the requested treatment will not be helpful, or perhaps so on the fringe that it would be unethical to attempt.
Price controls and a ban on doctor kickbacks are the real things needed. Also the ad's when you have kids asking what is a erection? then the ad's need to kicked from prime time.
Just turn off the damn TV while you eat dinner maybe? Or do what everyone else does and use Netflix/Hulu?
There are a series of ubiquitous problems in the medication scene, thus prescription or not, they're always be controversial: having ads for ANY drug directly targeting the consumer is a bad idea and it raises (some) costs and induces in (some) trivial treatments - that's health care for you in a nutshell, nothing just works, and that's why we have doctors to steer decision, but not to take it for us. For sure one thinks people should ask doctors and pharmacists what's good for what they have, not a TV commercial, and prescription is just a formalization for prone-to-danger drugs.
The real problem is that limiting the scope of awareness to health professionals (by not marketing to consumers) is also known to cause alarming disparities: Big Pharma abuses "lobbying" all kinds of professionals into their products not by conscience but by introducing benefits to promoters - paid vacation, luxurious conferences and product presentations in fancy hotels with all paid up, commissions for regional sale success, or even direct influence in professional development. They all play a part in Big Pharma's marketing strategy for any drug, a lot more than direct consumer influence.
I'd rather they make supervision measures of these problems stricter than just taking action on consumer-centric marketing. A good example for something people need awareness about is LASIK: most doctors won't prescribe it, it's not good for the spectacles industry and for insurers to pay up, but most people would have reduced quality of life if it wasn't their own initiative to request for LASIK operations.
You have to take a prescription before you know what's in it. If you like your ads, you can keep your ads. Does it really matter at this point if consumers have a choice? What difference does it make?!?!?
Yet these demoncraps continue to get elected. I'm not buying it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
but the ban isn't just about users seeking more expensive treatments, it's about them wanting treatment they don't need and also misunderstanding the treatment due to the ads that mislead and cover up all the facts that aren't generally published on them.
people die from properly prescribed pharma at a rate of 100,000 per the AMA's 2000 published article on the matter. no - these aren't over doses - nor suicides - nor med errors causing it, but the drugs themselves.
if you want to do some digging for the article I have it hidden away in the articles section on this page - the original AMA published article as well as a site using the same data as a source (search for The Medical System Kills: FDA Approved Drugs Kill Over 100,000 People Annually). oregonstatehospital.net/resources.html
Psych meds and sleep aids are some of the most widely misunderstood and abused drugs. Want to fix your depression? Take a deadly tranquilizer called Abilify, and get encephalopathy, dystonia, akathisia, and other permanent conditions - and maybe even real depression and anxiety you never get out of. :)
And, by whim, you mean actually checking that the pharma company isn't lying through their teeth about the products?
There's been enough public instances showing these companies will paint an overly rosy picture of how good a drug is, downplay the incidence of side effects, and otherwise manipulate the data to give desired outcomes.
So, boo fucking hoo ... compliance is how we have at least some confidence these guys aren't lying their asses off to sell a product which doesn't actually provide the benefits they claim, or which is far more likely to kill you than they claim.
I don't trust big pharma to ever be honest or have anything but their own profits as a priority. Not even a little.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
There was a time, before the internet, when such advertising was a necessary counterpoint to HMOs influence on doctors to always choose the cheapest solution, but now that the information is out there for all to see, these ads really do nothing to inform, their only effect is to artificially inflate demand for expensive patent drugs. But at the same time, it was the HMOs who first promoted this idea that, once you pay the flat rate for insurance, all your medical needs, including drugs, is taken care of. That sense of entitlement is baked into all subsequent health plans, including the Medicare drug benefit and ACA. A more reasonable alternative comes from an unexpected source: George W. Bush, who early in the the Medicare drug debate proposed that only truly needy patients or those with extraordinarily high drug expenses would get any help from the government. My feeling is that such a system would have worked better to control costs. Patients would decide for themselves whether a drug with a little less of a minor side effect is really worth 10 times as much as an older generic. Seniors, of which I am one, would get used to the idea that pills, and lots of them, are just a normal cost of growing old. Of course, all of this is a trade-off. Anything you do to reduce the possibility of "obscene" drug company profits, including banning advertising, is going to reduce the incentive to develop new breakthrough drugs.
Maybe people should start saying, "I am -generally- an $ideology but -"?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
What medicine really needs is competition, and that is something the AMA, despite that lip service in this announcement, has always resisted. Instead of banning advertising, give patients the right to get their prescriptions filled on the world market, just as we do when we buy electronics from Amazon.
In 2011 the FDA fined Google half a billion dollars for the crime of letting Canadian pharmacies advertise to Americans. Make the FDA give every stolen dime back to Google, and then slash its budget so it can't pursue any more anti-competitive operations like this. Make the FDA stick to its primary mission of organizing new drug tests, and nothing else.
Every time you see a drug ad on TV, take a drink. Every time you see a new one, drink the entire drink.
If tobacco is too dangerous to allow it to be advertised... then the same should be true for alcohol.
It also doesnt hurt that this would immediately put the NFL out of business :)
If people are too stupid to listen to their doctor, they deserve to die.
Well, it seems that, in any field, you should probably listen to the experts if you want to maximize your chance of a positive outcome. Then again, doctors as a profession actually have a worse track record than anybody. For at least six thousand years, people have been saying, "listen to your doctor, he knows what he's talking about", and for about five thousand nine hundred years that's been a mostly false statement and terrible advice.
Do you really think that it would make any difference? On this tiny speck of land where prescription drug ads are banned, ads are just as obnoxious, but screaming "There's a NEW drug for $CONDITION, ask YOUR doctor about it!" instead.
The only case where consumers should be allowed to override their doctors concerns about drugs and treatments is in cases where there is substantial loss of quality of life involved.
The knock on effects of doing this are worse for society than the problem you are trying to correct. The problem is that you hurt our ability to determine if our experimental treatments actually work.
When doctors invoke the "do no harm" clause to keep someone from accessing experimental treatments or drugs when that person is terminal or in severely degraded quality of life, its ridiculous.
Because when the patient takes that treatment that does harm them or doesn't fix the problem (just like the doctor promised it would) then the doctor gets to spend some lovely time in a court room. But that's not the worst thing. If it was just some extra lawsuits we could deal with that. No, THE worst thing is that by doing what you propose we badly hurt our ability to get people into clinical trials to find out if medicines actually work. The simple fact is that to find out if drugs work we have to do trials. This necessarily means that some people are going to die so that more may live. You cannot find out if the treatments actually and objectively work if you allow everyone to get access to experimental treatments in pursuit of improved quality of life. By advocating for free access to experimental unproven treatments you are unintentionally advocating for eliminating our ability to determine scientifically if treatments actually work.
I think your sense of compassion is admirable but you shouldn't forget about who will be unintentionally hurt by your actions. We all want to help the person we see suffering in front of us but we shouldn't forget the others who will suffer in the future if we act irresponsibly today.
Been saying this for years. The worst new offender is the drug for a very specific type of cancer. Why does that need to be advertised?
I would never have known I had Restless Legs Syndrome or was at acute risk of getting shingles if it hadn't been for the ads.
What? Why would you ever want to do away with those commercials, when they're so perfectly ripe for comic spoofing?
... what? If you don't want to discuss erections over dinner, here's a suggestion: don't.
The media will never go for it. Just like campaign finance reform, there's no upside for the infotainment complex. Since they're the ones controlling the discussion (and making all the money) there's 0% chance things will change.
It is cute how the AMA thinks they have some say in the matter though.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
No, but it means it should actually be a free fucking country and not a country where you get to put your hand over someone's mouth just because you don't like what they are saying or it's going to cost you money.
Your freedom of speech does not permit you to harm me fiscally or physically. In this case direct advertising of drugs does both. It drives up the cost of medicine so fewer people can get it and it encourages people to take medicines that they might not actually need. People DIE because of that and you think I'm the bad guy here?
Spin it how ever you want but you are advocating putting your hands on someone else to shut them up simply because they are saying WORDS.
Words matter and freedom of speech doesn't mean you get to say whatever stupid thing you want regardless of consequences, especially when people are physically and financially hurt by it.
I agree with you. I can't understand why so many people are against free speech.
Um, last I checked, no doctor is required to give a treatment just because a patient demanded it.
Medicine already has competition: churches, faith healers, supplement companies, homeopathy.
And the competition is doing very well. What good is competition when consumers are desperate and sick? If your wife or kid were to get seriously sick and the doctors in the ER tell you that she needs some expensive treatment and she'll die without it, are you gonna say, "Well, let me think about it and call around to see if I can get a better price"?
The problem with competition in medical care is that the people who need it most are least capable of making informed decisions.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'd be for that! I'm sick of seeing prescription ads, that the side effects take 4 times longer to mention, that the medicine that is suppose to cure you of whatever it is they are hawking. Plus, every one of these ads are for PRESCRIPTION meds. You can't walk into a pharmacy and say give me 30 of these. The DOCTOR has to prescribe it. Plus, these companies are banking on the idea that a consumer, wanting a "quick fix" will go running to their doctor, hounding them to prescribe it.
I'm sick of penis pill commercials, I don't want to have to explain what the hell erectile dysfunction is. Seriously..this shit needs to stop.
If drug advertising is banned, then MSNBC will disappear from TV land.
And, if drug advertising is banned how will I know what new disease I have this week?
Dave Barnes 9 breweries within walking distance of my house
I've been saying for a while that I'd pay $5-10 a month to not hear those commercials about gastrointestinal distress or bladder issues, but this is even better!
I hope they don't outlaw the Cialis commercials because the milfs they use are hot. Seriously, check it out. They're all hot and frisky.
It's less entertaining when they get to the litany of side effects, but when they get to "If you experience an erection lasting more than 4 hours...", I like to shout at the TV, "As if!".
You are welcome on my lawn.
Do they have a prescription drug for that?
Well, it'd be a start I guess.
What medicine really needs is competition, and that is something the AMA, despite that lip service in this announcement, has always resisted. Instead of banning advertising, give patients the right to get their prescriptions filled on the world market, just as we do when we buy electronics from Amazon.
I suspect there is more at play here. The advertising world, the drug companies, and the lawyers who look at any medicines listed side effects, and then go on fishing expeditions for lawsuits, have combined to make Television increasingly unwatchable. Where once upon a time, we'd have a lot of different commercials, some times about things we want to buy, now it's an infuriating mess of catheter ads, meds that they spend most of their time telling you how you might become an enraged killer, that women are full time leaky people who need to stuff stuff in every orifice to stop it, ant you really really need to take this probiotic and you will shit beautifully forever, and lawyer ads getting you to sue all the other advertisers. Everything is a disease, everything is a lawsuit.
And that isn't counting the JG Wentworth money scams or the free knee or back braces.
It used to be just during the daytime, but now it's crept into the evening hours as well.
It's pretty easy to go all free market on this shit, but I've almost stopped watching due to that crap, and it's part of television's death march. Maybe it's protecting assholes from themselves. And I'm not talking about the consumers.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
It is not only television. Take a look at Readers Digest some time. If you removed just the full page advertising and only those full pages with advertising on both sides of the page, the magazine would be about a third of the published thickness. I see this in all print magazines and have now stopped subscribing.
Then we don't have to waste our time fast-forwarding listening to all the sales pitching useless crap that we don't want nor need.
If something is good enough to be "advertised" by word of mouth, it probably isn't worth it.
>> there's a mute button on your remote. Learn to use it.
It's 2015. Where's my "skip" button? Hell, I'd take a "flag this commercial as inappropriate - show me TWO OTHER non-dick-hardening commercials instead" button.
One of the side-affects of this will be that we will see more and more TV stations fail. Pharama chew up a lot of ad time, and consequently help pay for a tonne of the OTA TV that we all watch. If all that disappeared, I see a huge hole in the budget for a lot of broadcasters...
Advertising a drug? How pointless. You're not going to take it unless prescribed anyway, and then you just ask for the generic version by defaiut, so what does advertising get them? Nothing.
I'm talking about competition in real medicine, not "alternatives." Homeopaths and other quacks already have a protected fiefdom of their own, covered inn a recent article here.
Yes, we need exactly the ability to call around and get a better price. Today we do that when we choose an insurance company to do the negotiating for us. For most people, we have nothing but the 'choice' of the insurance company our employer has picked for us. Why can't patients form buying pools to bid for expensive medications on the global market, just as countries with single-payer systems do? This is exactly how the Canadians achieve their low prices. Bulk purchasing shouldn't be reserved for governments, and American consumers should be legally alowed to benefit by being able to get prescriptions filled anywhere they wish.
You can be sure that if the US were to adopt its own government single-payer system, as Democrats have proposed, that lobbyists would have it restricted to the artificial domestic drug and hospital market, just as the VA and Medicare are now.
In an open market the advertisers would realize this, and make their ads more attractive. The FDA prevents them from doing so, and prevents advertisers from offering offshore sources, even of the same compounds.
nuff said
I'm betting most doctors don't either these days, and I'm also fairly sure the only source of this is the marketing material provided by the company
Drug company marketing materials are routinely NOT the only source of information. Furthermore doctors are well aware of that information from drug companies is suspect AND unlike you or me they have the training to understand what they are being told. My wife happens to be a physician and she has to interact with drug reps all the time. She regards anything that comes out of their mouth as a lie until proven otherwise by independent sources. Most doctors do not think very highly of drug companies.
The more we remove the pharmaceutical companies from driving decisions around healthcare and determining which products to use the better ... because having the conversation be dictated by multi-billion dollar corporations trying to maximize profits is a terrible idea.
I could not agree more.
In an open market the advertisers would realize this, and make their ads more attractive. The FDA prevents them from doing so, and prevents advertisers from offering offshore sources, even of the same compounds.
As much as I would like to believe that, advertising in general is screaming Look at me! Look at me! The only real regulation on the medicine side is that they have to spend a lot of time telling you the side effects, which is alittle off putting. The Lawyers? The people trying to get you to give up an annuity for some instant cash? They are pretty much unfettered, at least in advertising.
And that's pretty much why I'm saying that there are other factors at work here. Where they are at now - it isn't working, and there is a competitor in town. The intertoobz. So some of the big players like Comcast, they have a vested interest in having people buy their television service. And people are cutting that cable to the point that they are really concerned.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I am an unreformed 1960's liberal hippie lefty, and I agree. Advertising prescription drugs to the public is idiotic, and only encourages hypochondriacs.
> Its a free country,
Yes, a "free country" where you aren't actually allowed to go out and buy those drugs for yourself.
If you aren't competent to buy the product yourself, you aren't competent to be advertised to.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Do you think most consumers of health care can correctly define "real medicine"?
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'm a conservative libertarian . .
If you want to tell others what to do with their dollars then, no, you are not.
The point is awareness over competitors anyway. Sure you need a car but which one?
Just like the stopped the Adverts for Smoking they need to prevent these "For Profit" Pharma Companies from advertising their products direct to the consumer. If it requires a Prescription, then they should not be allowed to advertise it to me. I'm not a doctor, thus I can't prescribe it, so I don't want to see it. Hell it might even have saved Michael Jackson's life if he didn't know about many of the damn drugs he asked his doc for.
Peer reviewed scientific journals.
In other words, doctors would have to pay for an expensive subscription to look at ads.
Half the commercials on television are for drugs, so the corporate owned media is not going to report on this.
Your local/state/federal representatives are funded by Big Pharma, so they won't do anything. Yes, even local elections are now getting funding from Big Super PACs.
Banning direct advertising is the right thing to do, but we don't do the right thing very often when there's so much money involved.
WHAT no more twin bathtubs?
Listen Potsy, dryg companies were banned from advertising prescription drugs. In the early '90s the ban was lifted. Since then drugs companies have spend an enormous about of money on advertising and next to nothing on R&D. Time to re-institute the ban. You can't buy the fucking drug without a prescription! So it's pointless.
Now if this could really happen. Sick do death of the ED drugs. Not too mention it seems a lot of the drugs will kill you first before fixing the problem.
Which begs the question as to why bribing doctors should be allowed....
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
because the market would absolutely, positively NOT be flooded with Chinese melamine tablets masquerading as antibiotics.
I kind of like the stringent standards that the FDA imposes on prescriptions; really this sounds more like a patent/IP issue; drug companies are able to restrict the manufacture of generics for years, thus artificially keeping prices high.
How do you see hate in my statement?
You sound like the type that also sees hate in a red coffee cup.
You are welcome on my lawn.
> the American Medical Association has called for a ban on direct-to-consumer ads for prescription drugs and implantable medical devices
This is nbot about medicine pills, this is a conspiracy by the deaf lobby. Deaf people think they have a right to keep their children deaf, to perpetrate misery forever and thus want to ban cochlear implants! They think their silly handwaving is a "culture" under attack, even though they are just luddites with a disability who refuse the cure! Blind people pray every night that science soon be able to help them the same way, but the dumb and superstitious deafs refuse with hubris what human wisdom has brought them. There is a reason deafs are not tolerated by the majority, while everybody is helpful towards the blind.
(The problem is, America has a lot of born deaf people, because of the massive in-breeding that took place in tightly closed jewish and fringe-protestant settlements, with a resulting deterioration of their genetic heritage. For whatever reason, these communities have a disproportionally large and very unhealthy political influence in the USA.)
I suspect this is what's really driving doctors to want the ads banned. In the old days, pharma companies would "market" to doctors (i.e. kickbacks) to promote their drugs. Now they've cut out the middleman and market directly to the consumers.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
They should start with the first amendment to the US constitution. Any statute that bans advertising is unconstitutional on its face.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Notice how all of the advertisements for prescription drugs tell the viewers: "Ask your doctor about _________" ?
The doctors are probably getting tired of all the questions. Most people have at least a few months, if not a year, between office visits. Over that amount of time, the average TV viewer probably accumulates a list of about 50 different drugs to "Ask their doctor" about.
I was truly annoyed, years ago, with the first stupid ads for "the purple pill", "ask your doctor"... with NO verbiage as to what the pill was *for*. A *lot* of ads for prescription drugs are like that. And for the others... go read the PDR on one you might think would help you, and then look at all the contraindications. Why the hell would you even ask your doctor if he's already prescribing something else for you?
Asking the doc about other drugs, if the one(s) your on is reasonable, asking them for one specific drug, that they may have already written off, is not.
It's like an ordinary user of Windows making suggestions as to how to administer a Linux server.
And the ad budget for that crap raises the price of the drug above and beyond what the execs "need" for their annual bonus.
mark
Maybe he thinks that freedom from being manipulated into making bad health choices is more important than freedom to manipulate someone into making bad health choices for profit?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
How else will you learn that the miracle drug you saw advertised a week ago is causing death and injury worthy of substantial compensation?
Week one: "Hoomirratt has made a difference in my lung function!"
Week two: "This is an Important Announcement for people who took Hoomirratt, or their grieving loved ones."
Two shots if both ads are running at the same time.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
Why allow drug companies to spend millions (and pass that on to consumers) advertising something that consumers cannot get directly.
"Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..."
What do you propose to do? Personally I rather like the idea of free speech and a free press.
I'd also be curious as to your position if there was a proposed law such that it was now forbidden to talk about things like deaths at the hands of police officers.
Its a free country, let them advertise. Just please drop the requirements that they have to list the side effects.
People love to sue. By listing (possible) side effects, the drug companies limit their liabilities. I always find it ironic that most anti-depressants can cause an increase of suicidal thoughts. Even funnier is that sleep aids are required to warn that they "may cause drowsiness".
Eating dinner with kids and having to listen to 4 hour erections and other inappropriate dinner subjects is outrageous. If people are too stupid to listen to their doctor, they deserve to die.
Where do you live to get that kind of advertisement during dinner? I haven't seen ED commercials before 20:00 over here.
It's the AMA that has the defacto monopoly on accreditation of new medical schools. There have been a few built but nothing close to the rate necessary to keep up with demand. Why? To improve physicians' salaries.
This not only costs money, but lives
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
R&D costs are 10% and manufacturing is often negligible, so marketing costs (direct and indirect) are nearly 90%.
That's all waste that we are paying for. Marketing doesn't add value to a product. Most countries have figured that out and banned it.
It's not banned because it's a waste of resources, it's banned in most other countries because it's dangerous to manipulate people into thinking drug X, Y and Z will save you.
Pharma ads have been growing like weeds in TV spots, pushing aside old stalwarts like cars and beer. Even better for the networks, pharma ads tends to be long, 60 seconds or even more, easily filling ad space, including some of the most expensive ad space a network sells (like the Evening News). If they all went away, big revenue for the big networks would go up in smoke.
Of course, I'd love it. Save me from having to skip over them all the time, 'cause they're horrible, the way they show idyllic scenes of fantasy family life while a voice-over rattles off legaleze and side-effects. Good drinking game, take a shot every time you hear the phrase "can lead to death".
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
Take a look at the SEC filings of a handful of major Pharma companies. Most list 30-40% of revenue as marketing and advertising.
The same percentage as in most other industries. Companies that build and sell medical devices that are never sold or marketed to patients spend about the same percentage.
The AMA was founded by doctors. It's main purpose is to promote the welfare of doctors. That is not good or bad thing, but it is a very useful to keep that mission in mind when you hear the AMA speak.
The first question I would ask is that if the AMA is really concerned about health care costs, why does it not push harder to make more drugs like birth control pills available over the counter without a prescription? Or streamline the prescription process for drugs that low potential for abuse or for causing harm (most ED drugs)?
The second question I would have to ask is why is a better-informed consumer a bad thing? If the ads are incorrect or misleading, that obviously need to be addressed, but other than that, why would a patient hearing about a possible new treatment option be a bad thing? Are we not supposed to ever question our doctors? Is a doctor's time really so valuable that they cannot explain treatment options?
There are some serious 1st Amendment issues here as well. 30 years ago, you could have made the argument that public airwaves are a limited resource and that the government should have some say in their use. With cable, that is no longer true. You really have to show that drug ads are a major concern for public health like the cigarette ads were. The fact that drug ads annoy doctors is not a good enough reason.
Cynical translation: Advertising to consumers should be illegal, that way only doctors can be advertised to, in the form of kickbacks and invitations to "conferences".
Spencer Ogden
Which begs the question as to why bribing doctors should be allowed..
In fact, it pretty much isn't any more. Even free lunches are banned if there's no "invited speaker." OTOH, lots of MDs get rich by investing in drug companies or by opening their own treatment (or MRI, or colonoscopy) centers and then sending their patients there.
And quit misusing "begs the question," m'kay?
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
The AMA's working hypothesis is that we're all stupid. This applies to many consumers in any given area, but who are they to prevent the rest of us from exercising intelligent choices? After all, it's not that consumers are going to suddenly start doing their own doctoring, any more than we fix our own computers or work on our own cars. Today's world gives us a huge range of choices by default, except in areas where a monopoly has infiltrated the legal system and prevented us from exercising choice.
We've started Ubering our cab rides now, and the sky has not fallen. Time to disrupt a far more pervasive and pernicious monopoly than the one we get a taxi ride from once a year.
If more people had a general understanding of statistical terms and concepts, there wouldn't be as great a need for protecting them from the surface-level misrepresentations.
The simply fact is however that most people have very poor understanding of statistics and worse understanding of biochemistry, physiology, drug interactions, etc which are important when evaluating medicines. If people buy snake oil like homeopathy do you really think they are going to look objectively at real medicines? Even fairly smart and ostensibly well educated people buy into pseudo-science and quackery on a routine basis.
That said, I agree that people shouldn't have to suffer just because of the state of the educational system in this country at the time when they were coming through it.
It wouldn't matter if we had the best educational system possible. Some people simply aren't very bright and are easily taken advantage of and no amount of education will fix that. We have to protect everyone, not just the high achievers.
Doctor's Cartel attempts to silence organizations providing alternate sources of information. News at 11. Seriously, you don't have to be smart to be a doctor, and you certainly don't have to stay up on much of anything to remain a doctor, just pay your annual $3700 for a conference in Key West or Aspen, depending if you want the beach or skiing. This is merely the doctor's cartel trying to make sure a larger fraction of healthcare dollars go to them. Nothing more.
And quit misusing "begs the question," m'kay?
Actually, it is a stupid wording for a label. We should just give "begs the question" up for the plain reading so many people use, and strictly use the term "circular reasoning" for arguments that depend on their own statements as proof.
Posting anon because of mods above.
I'm New Around Here
I have to agree with you. One happy result of calling around about the price, is that you'd actually learn the price! Try and get a total cost quoted up front from the medical profession now.
Hey dumbass. There's an "engage" button on your brain. Learn to use it. I know, I know it hurts like hell, but your really need to take the time to understand the things you read. The medical community, in what I must say is a rather surprising move, is telling us that the over-the-top marketing of expensive prescription drugs is a bad thing for their patients. They should know, better than Big Pharma, better than government "regulators" who've allowed this mess to happen, and certainly better than you.
I fix my own computer and work on my own car. I don't do my own doctoring. I'd bet more than a few Slashdot readers fix their own computers and work on their own cars.
I want you to think about why "Uber for Medicine" is a really bad idea. I bet if you give it a few minutes, you'll come up with some very good reasons that we really don't want anything like Uber for Medicine.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Medicine already has competition: churches, faith healers, supplement companies, homeopathy. And the competition is doing very well.
The competition may be doing well, but it's not doing very much good.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
This makes Smiling Bob, sad.
I was wondering: whose AMA was it, and why is slashdot linking directly to reddit now?
...I think it is one of the most bloody f-g amazing things I have heard in a good long while.
Previously I have seen the AMA as being definitely part of the problem (and maybe this is just damage control in the face of Obamacare, etc?), and their (medical) side being part of the problem is much, MUCH worse than all of the business elements which are (e.g. insurance, pharmaceutics, etc.).
Bukowski said it. I believe it. That settles it.
I'm talking about competition in real medicine,...Yes, we need exactly the ability to call around and get a better price.
I don't see how that could possibly work. As someone with a family of 5, almost all of my encounters with the US medical system are along the lines of "OMG, we have to go to the hospital NOW." or "your {relative} had an accident, and was taken to {hospital X}" (which is almost always the nearest one physically capable of performing the required service). Nowhere in there is a good opportunity (and sometimes any opportunity at all) to shop around for a better ambulance service or emergency health provider.
This is what economists call a "captive market". In such a market, there can be no real competition. Everything is a "take it or leave it" proposition. Against life-or-death choices, that's no choice at all. So this pretend "free market" ends up just being a system to allow providers to make however much they think their unfortunate users can afford.
Yes, for non-emergency things its different, but its the emergency services that are costing all the money.
In general you physically can't have a free market in health care. Basic economics says its not an option.
Doctors are expected to live near enough to a library that has a subscription
I thought doctors were expected to live near their patients, even if those patients live far from a library. Or do I misunderstand the meaning of the name Doctors Without Borders?
For those of you old enough to remember, there was a time, not too long ago, when prescription drugs were not allowed to be advertised on television. We should ban them again, along with ads from lawyers (they used to be prohibited from advertising, too). It's not a matter of free speech - we ban tobacco companies from advertising on television - it's a matter of public good.
Today we have patients going into their doctor's office and demanding a drug they've seen advertised on television, BEFORE they're even examined to determine what's wrong! If they don't get what they think they need, they go to one doctor after another until they do, and sometimes the medicine they think they want is either not effective or dangerous.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Quick question... exactly what color is the sky on your planet? .... do unicorns really fart rainbows?
Follow up question
If you don't believe it, just think how effective SPAM is - and we KNOW whatever junk is being peddled by random emails is junk, but people buy shit from the places paying SPAMers by the truckload.
seriously, does
I have seen an ad for a drug on one of the national tv channels then immediately following that commercial was a lawyer commercial, advertising that if you'd taken THE SAME DRUG IN THE PREVIOUS COMMERCIAL and had experienced the listed side effects, you should call "1-800-BADDRUG", and you might be entitled to substantial compensation... All I could do was shake my head at this.. I wonder if the station/network got their asses chewed for that slipup.....
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
I bet if you give it a few minutes, you'll come up with some very good reasons that we really don't want anything like Uber for Medicine.
You have more faith than I do. I'm not entirely sure that they *can* come up with a few reasons as to why it is a bad idea.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
The worst part is that they probably self-identify as Libertarians. At times, it makes my life kind of tough.
No, folks... Medicine is one of those *important* things. Medicine is not something you trust to the ethics of the business - and yes, medicine is a business. No, the INVISIBLE FUCKING HAND IS A LIE! Err... Now that I have that out of me...
As a Libertarian, please understand that not all of us are dysfunctional or mentally retarded. Most of us recognize that a single pure-form ideology is not now, nor ever, going to be possible without being a totalitarian State. Most of us recognize the commons and the need to protect that - without leaving adequate rights in the bowl, how can we ensure that everyone gets their share of those rights?
I'm not so sure about the "most of us" any more. I'm so calling the "No True Scotsman" thing right now, however. I've seen more than one person say, "I am no longer a Republican, I'm a Libertarian now." They didn't actually change their ideology. They just were too embarrassed to be associated with the party any longer. I think it's a semi-valid claim and not, necessarily, a fallacy.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I'm an unreformed 1960s conservative and I agree... Holy Shit.. A conservative and a "leftie" agreeing on ANYthing? Has hell frozen over??? Listening to some of the side-effects of these drugs, you'd wonder why ANYONE with half a brain would ever take them.. Then of course you have a lawyer commercial next that tells you if you take these drugs and experience any of the side effects, "You may be entitled to substantial compensation"... All you can do is shake your head at the sheer stupidity...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
I think the OP was talking about compliance in all phases of drug development and distribution that go well beyond marketing. They are extensive and expensive!
love is just extroverted narcissism
These ads support television shows that greybeards like me enjoy.
We're an unwanted demographic for most advertisers.
Without them there will be fewer "Longmires" and more "Pretty Little Liars."
And you're trying to tell us that nobody gets fucked by the invisible hand?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I have seen an ad for a drug on one of the national tv channels then immediately following that commercial was a lawyer commercial, advertising that if you'd taken THE SAME DRUG IN THE PREVIOUS COMMERCIAL and had experienced the listed side effects, you should call "1-800-BADDRUG", and you might be entitled to substantial compensation... All I could do was shake my head at this.. I wonder if the station/network got their asses chewed for that slipup.....
I think that is the television version ot the internt's Tailored web experience.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
What, I missed a joke or something? Did you not say that churches compete with, and so are somehow against, modern medicine? And you said that they are doing well at it.
Modern medicine, which saves countless lives, is somehow opposed by the church, who then, logically, would want people to die.
Explain to me how that it is not hateful.
Compete with in the sense that there are people who choose to go light a candle or pray to Jesus instead of getting medical treatment. Educated people, too. It's more common than you'd think, especially with cancer. Chemo can be so onerous as to make people choose faith over medicine. The churches are not "against" modern medicine (well, most of them aren't). But for some people, they represent an alternative. And with medical care so expensive, I'll bet it's an alternative more people choose than you might care to admit.
That's all coming from your own head. Nothing I said indicates any of it.
You are welcome on my lawn.
But drug companies have a First Amendment right to free speech.
Step 1 in fixing american healthcare is stopping big pharma advertising to and incentivising doctors.
Step 2 is making them list the NNT and the chance of major side effects as percentages of the same pie, on the front of the packet and on all ads.
I'm a brit, but I have to say banning consumer advertising seems unamerican. Just make them provide enough information to make the purchase an informed decision.
Only if they pay the invisible hand the appropriate, agreed upon, fair market value for finger fucking.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Thank god. Pharma companies spend way too much on advertising. It's a waste of money, effort and time that is better spent working on something like, I don't know, curing cancer? If they have a good product, it will sell itself without overpriced commercials featuring a cartoon version of toenail fungus and overpriced Hollywood personalities.
I'd +1 the insightful if I had the points!
Personally I think it should be illegal to provide a drug to the public where the side effects outweigh any benefits. I'm tired of hearing ads that start "Do you have trouble going to sleep?" with the remainder of the ad fast talking through a list of scary side-effects "Can cause cancer in laboratory animals, may increase suicidal tendencies, can cause total renal failure, liver disease and increased chance of heart attack." This is an old joke, but it is still funny. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYodDH4qZQo
What about the people who have dealt with their illness for 20, 30, or 40 years and know more about the subject then the majority of doctors? You can't just assume that doctors know more then patients.
Prearranged insurance is our only way of negotiating on emergency services. We just need a wider choice of insurance companies. Don't try to sidetrack this as some sort of plea for ideological purity either; the ACA with its insurance markets actually gives us choices we didn't have before, and why not try a single payer system for those parts of the medical system already controlled by government? If Medicare could save by buying medications in bulk as the Canadian system does, let's try it. And if this does prove more efficient, why not let consumer buying clubs enjoy the same savings?
Competition in medicine doesn't have to mean throwing poor children into snowbanks. Because medicine is a basic need, I don't expect to see the percentage of charity and governmental presence in it change, but all parties, public and private, will save if we use competition to lower costs.
This is the economics equivalent of screaming "denier" at anyone who quibbles about the fine points of AGW theory. No, the whole idea of open markets and competition was not dreamed up in 1930 by that one Russian chick who all the liberals hate. It is as old as the human species.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Okay. It is unclear then why you drug Christians or even homeopathy into it.
On the subject, we were fine with our free and open society when prescriptions could not be advertised. I would support going back to that. There is no right to advertise cialis on my television.
I did not mention Christians at all. I mentioned "churches" and there are certainly non-Christian churches.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You're doctor
No I'm not, but thanks for the compliment.
so is stupidity.
but I repeat myself.
which is all done to get the doctor to push their drugs.
which should also be illegal.
the thing driving doctor recommendations should be medical science, not bribes.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
I agree completely... as a past big pharma researcher, in early drug development, compliance is a big time, and therefore money, investment.
R/D is more than 10%. It costs 1 billion dollars, and 10 years of time (money) to bring a drug to market. That is assuming all hurdles and compliance milestones are met.
Do I trust big pharma? Yes I do. Do I trust them to maximize profits by slashing research and licensing in, or laying off, or doing whatever it takes, Oh yeah.
The Vioxx case is one that illustrates that big pharma can be trusted, and lawyers perpetuate a different ideal. The drug was okay, but one person wrote in a notebook that there may be an cardiac issues. That one notebook entry cost Merck billions. Celebrex and other Cox inhibitors, made by other companies, have the same issues, but did not have a scientist write in a notebook, "possible cardiac issues". Lawyers jumped on this, called coverup, and sold the case as knowledge of negligence.
Anyway, advertisements, and sales reps going to offices are already heavily regulated, and most doctors and patients are not affected by commercials. The small percentage that are, sometimes it is a good thing. Lyrica for neuropathic pain, or Cymbalta, or other new uses for older drugs, is a good thing for people that are uninformed, and it could start a discourse with the doctor that leads to a non narcotic remedy.
my 2 cents
So, you're saying that if people aren't part of a "clinical trial" you couldn't possibly record information about whether the treatment actually worked?
If you aren't part of a clinical trial in most cases you CANNOT know if the treatment works. Sometimes people recover and it has nothing to do with the medicine. Happens all the time. So did that aspirin cure your headache or did it go away for other reasons? With one data point you cannot possibly know for certain. Even if you collect a lot of data points you still may not be certain of whether a drug works. Unless you structure a study and can control for variables (typically with a trial) and have a control group it is in many cases literally impossible to be certain if a treatment actually works. There are exceptions of course but not often.
Not all trials have to be double blind studies (many aren't). Anecdotal evidence of treatments administered has some value in some cases but generally it is useless because you have no well defined control group to compare against or because there are too many variables to account for to understand the mechanism of action. I have a lady I work with who is convinced that echinacea has kept her from getting the flu despite the fact that every credible scientific study says that it has no effect. It's the logical fallacy of Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc. There are countless other factors that can explain why she has avoided the flu which have nothing to do with her taking that supplement.
My now deceased neighbor was part of several clinical trials. She always lied about her drinking and thc consumption, so I don't think that data from clinical trials is necessarily more pure than data from people who try experimental treatments without being a member of a clinical trial would be.
Doctors who run these trials are well aware that people lie. I have family who are involved in running these sorts of trials. Examples like what you cite are one of the many reasons why you need large groups so that you can control for the noise. Plus in many cases they will actually do a physical to check for lying. And if it is a double blind study they have a 50/50 chance of getting a placebo anyway.
Your way isn't the only successful way.
Double blind studies are the gold standard of clinical trials for a very good reason. There are times when other things will work or when they aren't feasible but that doesn't mean we should start accepting bad scientific data. Utilizing experimental treatments for compassionate care is almost the very definition of hurting many people in the long term to (probably futilely) help one person in the short run.
What a great idea. Get rid of legalized bribery. All the media out there are now so bought and paid for that they are afraid to run stories that show pharma drugs and treatments in a negative light even when it is massively deserved. Project Censored did a interesting review of this very issue. When one advertiser can take 10-15% of your profits and give it to your competition are you really going to run that story?
I thought that 10% R&D cost figure was hugely inaccurate (given a recent presentation to my Rotary Club by a Pfizer sales rep). But apparently it's not far off at all!
http://www.fiercebiotech.com/s...
Pfizer (a big R&D spender) probably continues to cut back from their 2011 13.5% R&D budget, so 10% might not be so far off after all.
I have seen an ad for a drug on one of the national tv channels then immediately following that commercial was a lawyer commercial, advertising that if you'd taken THE SAME DRUG IN THE PREVIOUS COMMERCIAL and had experienced the listed side effects, you should call "1-800-BADDRUG", and you might be entitled to substantial compensation...
Without ads for prescription drugs and ads for class-action lawsuits against said drugs, Fox loses 99% of its revenue stream, ISIS doesn't get the holy war they were looking for and World War Whatever never happens.
I don't trust our medical system. I will not EVER go to a doctor. Emergency room visits are a last resort. Basically if it isn't something that I can't stitch up myself I will go. I've watched my mother's health slowly degrade over the last decade after she was diagnosed with crohn's disease. Her Doctors have been trying so many different drugs, most of them not approved for GI or crohn's specifically. If she ever has to go to the emergency room, it seems as though no one in the hospital can read her chart and so it is like she is starting back at square 1. I have absolutely 0 faith in the healthcare system in this country and I view it as just another way to squeeze money out of the people.
Hey dumbass, there's a mute button on your remote. Learn to use it. Better yet turn off the fucking television when you have dinner with your family.
Love the viagra / cialis ads that appear at mealtime and just before Jimmy Kimmel show. We Canadians watch American channels and are aghast at the amount of drug advertising, with final minor warnings, this drug can kill you if you have this or that. And of course, there are now viagra / ciallis adverts for women.
Time to restrict watching to Canadian channels. -- no drug adverts allowed.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Fun fact: if you mod then post anon from the same IP, your mods are deleted just like if you had posted normally, except you don't get a warning about it.
http://effectivehealthcare.ahr... solves this issue.
Casteism
If people want to take something, and it doesn't do physical harm to anyone else, they should be allowed to.
But that's the thing. It DOES harm someone else. It harms people in the future because don't know whether a medicine works or not. Stop thinking that the only person that matters is the person suffering currently.
Whether some third party is happy about it or not should never be a consideration in what is legally permitted.
It matters very much when that third party is directly affected. Experimental treatments are NEVER just about the patient being treated. It's about saving as many lives as possible. There are ways to reduce suffering (pain, nausea, etc) that do not sacrifice our ability to improve medicine.
If large numbers of people take a drug about which you want to learn more, data can be collected from learning their experiences. Sure, there'll be more noise, but as you have pointed out, with enough data points, the noise can be filtered out.
First, many conditions simply do not have large numbers of people affected so you cannot rely on large numbers. Second, collect what data exactly? What exactly are you studying and how do you direct large numbers of uncoordinated people to collect useful data on a drug that by definition is experimental? Third, who is going to keep track of the data and how do you ensure the data is accurate, unbiased and untainted? Fourth, even when large groups are possible there usually is STILL is too much noise to know if a treatment is effective unless the effectiveness is really, really strong and immediate. Fifth and most importantly, you are literally sacrificing lives in the future to give an experimental treatment that in all likelihood is futile at best.
Frankly your assumptions simply don't hold in the real world. We do medical studies the way we do for VERY good reasons. If it really was as simple as you claim we would already be doing it that way. It would be a lot cheaper and easier but unfortunately what you suggest very rarely actually works. You are suggesting things that have already been considered and dismissed by people who know what they are doing because doing studies in that fashion does not work well.
I have not doubt that double blind studies do a fine job. If you want people to participate in a study, redirect some of that advertising money and pay them.
Putting a profit motive to a medical study is a BAD idea for all sorts of reasons. You think no one has ever thought of that? Doing that creates all sorts of ethical problems not to mention introduces even MORE noise in to the data itself. Seriously, go talk to someone who actually runs these sort of studies or a medical ethicist. It would take me a long time to run through all the reasons your suggestion is a Really Bad Idea.
You could say that about any product. You could argue that McDonald's shouldn't be allowed to advertise because it increases the price of a Big Mac.
There are huge and important differences. 1) If the drug is available it will be prescribed by a doctor who is aware of the drug already and who will utilize his professional judgement about efficacy. There is no health care benefit to advertising to me. 2) As a non medical professional I have NO clue if what the drug company is advertising is appropriate treatment. Having me ask my doctor about the treatment does not change that fact. 3) Advertising a drug to a patient directly is expensive and unnecessary. Healthcare costs are too high already without adding to the pile with sleazy marketing to nervous patients. 4) It doesn't benefit patients and results in no demonstrably improved health care outcomes. If it doesn't improve care then it shouldn't be allowed.
Why not just ban advertising in general?
Because that would be stupid. If you can't see the difference between advertising a Big Mac and advertising a drug then you're pretty clueless.