Are TV Pharmaceutical Ads Damaging? 383
trivialscene asks: "ABC News is carrying an article about a recently published study in the medical research journal Annals of Family Medicine which examined prime time television ads run by pharmaceutical companies. The researchers concluded that the generally ambiguous ads, which appeal almost entirely to emotion rather than fact, tend to confuse viewers. They also suggest that the ads may be creating problems at the doctor's office, as some people might become convinced they need a particular medication and insist on getting it, rather than leaving the decision to trained medical professionals. What do you think about the presence of drug advertisements on television?"
not sure (Score:5, Funny)
Who cares? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not for me (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The way I see it... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I hate ambiguous drug ads. (Score:3, Funny)
My roommate at the time and I used to talk about wanting to see a "Propecia Baby".
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Funny)
All that matters is that there are pills that give me erections for hours on end.
You need pills for that? Sheesh, what's this country coming to?
Re:I hate ambiguous drug ads. (Score:3, Funny)
Zaxor [angryflower.com] on Bob the Angry Flower
Re:Ask your doctor about modding parent up. (Score:5, Funny)
You're seeing Dr. House?
Re:They are banned in Britain (Score:3, Funny)
This is the fundamental reason why our medical system fails it. While drugs have their place, they usually aren't the best response to an illness. But, in Fascist America (de facto integration between corporations and the government), all the health options that are NOT drugs or surgery get labeled 'alternative', and you generally have to discover those options on your own.
The basic requirements for health haven't changed at all for thousands of years. The father of western holistic medicine called them assimilation (the taking in nutrients) and elimination (clearing out waste products). See Dr. Reilly's Handbook for Health through Drugless Therapy [amazon.com] for a manual (of a sort) on nutrition, exercise, massage, and other unconventional approaches to health that ought to be mainstream.
Results are what we should be concerned about, and by this margin the focus on finding the right drug falls down. A pharmaceutical company's ideal product is a 0drug that manages a sick person's symptom well, but doesn't address the underlying cause, so one has to keep going back to the drugstore for perpetual refills. There's not much money in "curing" disease - all the money's in managing the symptoms.
Reilly's handbook is all about the "cures" that he had much success with in his busy mid-20th-century practice. Not every patient got a cure, of course, but many found therapies that allowed them to be pain-free well after they'd been written off by their regular doctors.
Re:marketing vs R&D (Score:4, Funny)
Oh of COURSE that's what it means.
Maybe they need that marketing to sell the drugs to pay for the R&D to make the drugs and the best way to do that is to pay for more advertisements.
You think companies like to advertise? They would rather give the money to R&D if the drugs actually sold themselves. Most drugs, however, do not sell themselves. Most of the medication sold in this country has little effect or could easily be replaced by an older drug which is 1/10 the cost and only 3 to 4% less effective.
Another problem is that if the patient dies, that '3 to 4%' figure is brought up in COURT in the form of a malpractice suit against the doctor that prescribed the alternative!
The niche medications which treat ailments that effect 1% of the population have a high price and the research in finding them is often NEVER PAID OFF. It's a tightly held secret that drug companies often pursue avenues that yield JACK SQUAT.
The worthless 'celebrex' and 'nexium' medications pay for those dead ends and niche drugs. And their marketing allows them to do that.
Drugs like Celebrex which show barely any improvement over placebo, and medications that take care of problems related to obesity (a relatively easily-cured disease) wouldn't be flying off the counters if it weren't for those commercials.
If the drug companies cut their marketing in half, freeing up 20% of their revenue according to your figures (which, btw, are wrong), they may end up having half the revenue to work with. So they'd have -50% less money and +20% more, for a net of -30%. Those are obviously arbitrary figures, but you can see the point: less marketing does not mean more money for R&D.
So, to sum up, the pharmaceutical system in the US is the best money could buy. If central planning were the answer, the US wouldn't be lapping the socialized world in pharmacological research. When government starts telling doctors what to prescribe and price fixing on drugs in America, we'll see a quick restructuring inside these companies in which R&D will fall through the floor.
Re:marketing vs R&D (Score:3, Funny)
I tried this. Added bonuses were that I tried out and made second soprano in the Vienna Boys' Choir (at age 46), I don't have to shave any more, and my underwear doesn't fit as tightly either.
One downside was that my nipples are a lot more sensitive than they used to be.
Re:marketing vs R&D (Score:1, Funny)
I heard about the magic of Viagra, so I went to my dr and said I couldn't get it up. Ok, I lied, how is a doctor supposed to test for "performance anxiety"? And when a fifty-something says he can't get it up, who's going to disbelive him? So he gave me a sample pack.
Now all the crack whores in town want to marry me.
As to the side effects, by the time you're my age you get most if not all of them WITHOUT Viagra!