Here in.au, consumer-targeted advertising for prescription drugs is completely illegal. The makers of Xenical got in astounding legal trouble here for just hinting too strongly at the identity of the product in question in their "ask your doctor about losing weight" campaign.
And that's as it should be, IMHO.
The general public are not qualified to judge the efficacy, safety or appropriateness of prescription drugs. That's why they're prescription drugs - so people won't fuck themselves up by taking them when they really shouldn't.
If inappropriate consumption of a drug really doesn't matter, then it doesn't require a prescription anyway.
If doctors were immune to manipulation by patients, this wouldn't matter. But that's simply not the case. Patients go 'doctor shopping' until they get what they want, and make no secret of this. They get some damn-fool idea into their heads, and nobody can shake it loose.
The only sane approach is to try and prevent them from getting the damn-fool idea in the first place. While we can't censor what they go looking for, we *can* control what's pushed in their face - and that's a lot better than nothing.
Just imagine you're setting up a computer for "that" kind of user: the kind that have a pathological lack of kloo and responsibility, but are utterly convinced that they know best. Imagine also that their life savings are tied up in the data they have on their system, and that they demand that you give them root access to their machine. Your boss, in other words.
Seriously, wouldn't you want to make damn sure that you keep fdisk, dd, mdadm and mkfs (and any other such tools) far away from the GUI menus, and/sbin out of $PATH?
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It's a platform for vibrating devices - and if you use it, you get screwed. I should get one for my wife...
Here in .au, consumer-targeted advertising for prescription drugs is completely illegal. The makers of Xenical got in astounding legal trouble here for just hinting too strongly at the identity of the product in question in their "ask your doctor about losing weight" campaign.
/sbin out of $PATH?
And that's as it should be, IMHO.
The general public are not qualified to judge the efficacy, safety or appropriateness of prescription drugs. That's why they're prescription drugs - so people won't fuck themselves up by taking them when they really shouldn't.
If inappropriate consumption of a drug really doesn't matter, then it doesn't require a prescription anyway.
If doctors were immune to manipulation by patients, this wouldn't matter. But that's simply not the case. Patients go 'doctor shopping' until they get what they want, and make no secret of this. They get some damn-fool idea into their heads, and nobody can shake it loose.
The only sane approach is to try and prevent them from getting the damn-fool idea in the first place. While we can't censor what they go looking for, we *can* control what's pushed in their face - and that's a lot better than nothing.
Just imagine you're setting up a computer for "that" kind of user: the kind that have a pathological lack of kloo and responsibility, but are utterly convinced that they know best. Imagine also that their life savings are tied up in the data they have on their system, and that they demand that you give them root access to their machine. Your boss, in other words.
Seriously, wouldn't you want to make damn sure that you keep fdisk, dd, mdadm and mkfs (and any other such tools) far away from the GUI menus, and