AMA Calls For Ban On Direct-To-Consumer Advertising of Prescription Drugs (ap.org) 305
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.
Worthy of consideration (Score:4)
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That's not actually that far fetched. In most countries it's already illegal for advocates to advertise (I'm not sure if the US legal system differentiates between attorney's and advocates), and, in fact, advocates are not even allowed to take walk-in clients, they can only accept a client after that client is referred to them by an attorney.
In most sensible countries there are also very strict rules about how attorney's are allowed to advertise, generally print adds and the yellow-pages and a website maybe
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Mass-market attorney advertisements in the US are a relatively recent phenomenon. Here's a quick history:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Worthy of consideration (Score:3)
In the Dutch Roman system they operate in different courts handling entirely different types of cases. An attorney can become a magistrate. An advocate can become a judge. But not vice versa.
Partly its a smart division of labour. Attorney cases take weeks, maybe a month or two. Advocates can be handling the same case for years. So partly tge restriction is to free them up so they can focus only on that heavy workload. If nobody can seek clients nobody has to. Attorneys get the clients first and if its an ad
No way! (Score:3)
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.
stupid (Score:5, Interesting)
"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."
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But you know the scary thing is a lot of doctors only find out about new medicines when the sales guy shows up, gives him the glossies and the samples, and whatever incentive I suspect they give him.
Which means the doctor may not know any more about it than you do.
Honestly, these days it's the rep from the pharma companies suggesting treatments to doctors who know little or nothing about the drug beyond the claims by the company.
I'm in favor of cutting out the direct marketing of drugs like this. Let's get
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If your doctor is even close to competent they will go look at the literature on any drug they prescribe. Yes, the sales reps can create bias, but they don't magically make a doctor incompetent.
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Of course not. That would be silly. Instead, they use psychology, specifically the human brain's tendency to forget where it got a nugget of information from and bias against counter-evidence.
Even competent people are still just humans, in the end.
Re:stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
A very strong case can be made for Doctors not even prescribing specific drugs. Even the best docs don't really know the drugs that well, but pharmacists do. Doctors should do the diagnosing of the issue(s) and if they wish to use a pharmaceutical treatment send the information to the pharmacist and let them consult with the patient and choose the appropriate drug(s) and dosage. This is especially important when dealing with multiple medications from multiple specialists. Pharmacists are by far the most under-appreciated medical professionals.
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Not necessarily in every case. A lot of conditions can be treated by a lot of drugs in the same families, such as NSAIDs and antibiotics. A pharmacist probably couldnt tell you which NSAID is best. Usually a doctor tries the cheapest one first (to help the patient since most have to foot at least part of the bill), then switch them up if the desired effect doesn't happen.
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I don't even know if Doctors know all that much about the drugs they prescribe or keep up with new information.
I had a serious accident that involved amputating half my left ring finger and fusion of the distal joint on my left middle finger. The hand surgeon prescribed Percocet for pain management -- oxycodone with acetaminophen.
I had a review with the surgeon's physician assistant about two weeks after surgery and she renewed my pain medication, prescribing straight oxycodone (same strength as the Percoc
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Tylenol is really very easy to OD on. It's an over the counter medicine that people treat lightly. It's in a number of different products. You can easily get too much of it if you aren't really careful. The gap between "strong dose" and "overdose" is relatively small.
In some places, most of the ODs are from Tylenol rather than some street drug like heroin.
I would not necessarily assume that the GP was ignorant. The surgeon might also have a different perspective on things based on his practice. Similarly, a
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I would not necessarily assume that the GP was ignorant.
The physician's assistant *works for* the surgeon. It's a 1:1 relationship.
The basic problem is that there isn't prescribing alignment between the two professionals working with each other in a direct reporting relationship in the same practice.
Perhaps the PA is wrong for deviating from the prescribing practice of the surgeon she works for, although you can make a strong argument that the PA was actually employing a better prescribing practice based on newer and more sound understandings of acetaminophen t
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I wonder, are there any rules about marketing people directly marketing off-label uses for drugs? I know a lot of doctors prescribe drugs for things not directly listed as uses. And sometimes it is useful; what might be "side effects" for one patient, might be beneficial for another. Can a marketer say "the drug's primary use is for X, but we know a lot of doctors are using it for Y"?
Re:stupid (Score:4, Informative)
Disclaimer: I work for a medical technology company.
One of the things that is hammered home during the ongoing mandatory training here is that even hinting to sales and marketing that there are off-label uses for medical devices or drugs can be a termination offense. Two reasons for this:
1) FDA regulations permit sales/marketing be on-label ONLY
2) It gives recipients of the off-label use a huge avenue to sue the company
Having said that, there is a process for *practicing doctors* to find out or suggest off-label uses for medical devices or drugs by contacting the doctors/MDs at the company in question or finding out about those off-label uses via journal articles. But sales/marketing promoting off-label usage is a big no-no.
Re:stupid (Score:4, Informative)
Re:stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
If my doctor doesn't already know whether X is right for me, then I need to get a new doctor.
Agreed. On top of that what bothers me is the sales hook:
"Do you have symptoms that include being nervous when in complicated social situations?"
"Does your skin sometimes itch?"
"Do you experience shortness of breath after running marathons?"
They frequently describe circumstances that are so vague they apply to pretty much every self-diagnosing hypocondriac on the planet. Might as well ask "are you a fool with money you need to be parted from?" Up here in Canada, direct-to-proto-patient marketing is illegal. Strangely we're not all dying because we haven't heard of some med. Also, our meds are typically cheaper than in the US.
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In the world in which doctors are constantly evaluating all humans for all conditions, I agree with you. But "the average slob" does not go to see the doctor unless he is dying, and when he is dying, his bladder/hairloss/libido issues may not come up.
"end users, ask your sysadmin if systemd is right for you."
"End users, there is this thing called VPN which lets you do your work offsite. Ask your sysadmin if you want privileges enabled on your account."
Or the doctors could... (Score:2)
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Sure, when you shop around for a doctor you then get shoved into your state's Doctor shopping database like you are an addict.
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google it (Score:4, Interesting)
Please DO IT!!! (Score:2)
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!!!"
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Works fine here. Only OTC drugs are advertised.
Busy the bodies (Score:2)
As long as they don't lie, they have a right to speech. Already they cram in warnings and side effects.
It's Sad That Direct Ads Work (Score:2)
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What if the doctor is unaware of the patient recommended drug? Won't the patient recommendation cause the doctor to research the possibility of using it?
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Of course... (Score:2)
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.
Finally (Score:2)
Cool - but could we also ban... (Score:2)
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
Really? (Score:2)
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 ve
AMA is just looking to power grab for its own (Score:3)
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!
Catch-22 (Score:2)
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 comm
Obligatory Youtube Video....."the pills I need" (Score:2)
It's almost a drinking game (Score:2)
Every time you see a drug ad on TV, take a drink. Every time you see a new one, drink the entire drink.
But, but... the comic value! (Score:2)
What? Why would you ever want to do away with those commercials, when they're so perfectly ripe for comic spoofing [youtube.com]?
Never happen (Score:2)
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.
Whither MSNBC? (Score:2)
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?
Moms (Score:2)
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!".
Even better: Just ban advertising (Score:2)
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.
TV Stations... (Score:2)
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...
THANK YOU! (Score:2)
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"Sick do[sic] death of the ED drugs."
How long have you been taking them?
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Re:Marketing costs? Do me a favor (Score:5, Informative)
Take a look at the SEC filings of a handful of major Pharma companies. Most list 30-40% of revenue as marketing and advertising.
Re:Marketing costs? Do me a favor (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Which begs the question as to why bribing doctors should be allowed....
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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 w
Re:Marketing costs? Do me a favor (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Marketing costs? Do me a favor (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Marketing costs? Do me a favor (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
Re:Marketing costs? Do me a favor (Score:5, Informative)
Wow, grasping at straws here. Whims set the price of medication, advertising is what, 1% of that?
Here's your sign. [washingtonpost.com]
Any advertising costs too much. (Score:2)
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.
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Without any advertising, how are even doctors supposed to learn of new treatments that work where existing treatments fail?
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Peer reviewed scientific journals.
They also have the added benefit of not being an obviously biased source.
This also works for sufficiently motivated patients BTW...
Paywall (Score:2)
Peer reviewed scientific journals.
In other words, doctors would have to pay for an expensive subscription to look at ads.
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You people really are terribly clueless for all of the noise you're making about this subject.
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> Then don't - the same way you can avoid paying for BMW's advertising by not buying a BMW.
That's just assinine. These are MEDICAL TREATMENTS we're talking about here. Some of them aren't even a matter of personal preference, there's a very real public safety element to some of them. Tolerating PESTILENCE is a VERY BAD idea.
Not to mention that these things are monopolies.
Medical journals cover the extent to which doctors actually need to be informed about this stuff. The rest is just milking a system tha
Re:Ban the side effects (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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>> 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.
Re:Ban the side effects (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ban the side effects (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Ban the side effects (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Maybe people should start saying, "I am -generally- an $ideology but -"?
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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?
Re:Ban the side effects (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Ban the side effects (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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
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Do you think most consumers of health care can correctly define "real medicine"?
Re:Ban the side effects (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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How do you see hate in my statement?
You sound like the type that also sees hate in a red coffee cup.
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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 f
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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.
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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 wor
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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.
Re: Ban the side effects (Score:4)
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
Unintended consequences of compassion (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Do you want to pay for advertising? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Do you want to pay for advertising? (Score:5, Interesting)
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 -- and I refuse to believe that is accurate or doesn't downplay the issues.
Doctors can't see the real data on these things, and pharma companies routinely try to pitch it for "off-label" applications they haven't been approved for.
So, you have marketing to the consumers, marketing provided directly to the doctors in the form of samples of glossy material ... and nobody really has a clue about the effectiveness or real incidence of side effects.
In a lot of cases, modern medicine as it relates to big pharma is a dog and pony show driven by salesmen and people in marketing.
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.
Doctors are not that naive (Score:3, Interesting)
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 cou
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Freedom of speech != freedom to harm others (Score:3)
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 hu
Price controls and a ban on doctor kickbacks (Score:3)
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.
Why do you think doctors want ads banned? (Score:2)
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.
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> 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.
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Doctors are human and not all knowing.
Some of them think otherwise.. I had some pain in my knees, went to see the orthopedic doctor that I'd consulted a year or so before with another knee problem. Turns out my doctor had retired, and I was referred to this new doctor. I met with him, we chatted for a bit as I explained where the pain was.. He seemed like a
pretty good "replacement" for my old doctor. He took xrays, and when I came back later to see what the problem was, the first thing out of his mouth was I needed surgery. I told him I'd have
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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.
OK. That's fine .
But, the real problem here is doctors. Yes, drug advertising creates a big demand for medications that may not be appropriate. But because these medications are only available by prescription, the solution is incredibly simple. When people come in saying "I need Medication X", it's up to the doctors to say "No you don't"
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The problem with the ads (at least the ones I've seen) boils down to this.
"Hey, ask your doctor if {X} is right for you. We're not actually going to tell you was {X} is used for, because that might actually be informative. We're just going to show people leading an active lifestyle after apparently taking {X}, with the idea that without {X}, they're out-of-shape slugs.
And now, here's 30 seconds of side-effects. Remember, ask your doctor about {X}."
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If you are "taking an active interest" in health care, you don't need drug advertising. If anything, that kind of activity is directed at the most ignorant and least engaged kind of patient/consumer out there. THAT is actually the problem. Drug ads drive conspicuous consumers and distort healthcare and turn some doctors into glorified pushers.
This is the Internet age, if you want to genuinely educate yourself about something then you can.
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That's making the VERY generous assumption that every doctor is working hard to stay up-to-date on the latest drugs and treatments for all his patients' conditions. I would hate to die because I never heard about the drug or treatment that could have saved me (because the company behind it couldn't advertise it and because my doctor hadn't been keeping up with the latest advances).
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So it's win-win.
Doctors get their perks and I don't have to see the standard formula medical prescription commercial where it's a bunch of Smiling Geriatrics doing everyday mundane crap while some hushed voiceover gives the rundown of the possible side-effects that are generally worse than the symptoms it's trying to alleviate.
Prescription costs? The hell is that? My insurance just pays their negotiated rate and I don't pay a dime out of pocket (premium deducted out of my paycheck...so technically the "d
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Because if a current sufferer of the disease switches from drug X to TV advertized drug Y, the company stands to make tens of thousands of $$$ per year from a single patient.
I think these drugs are mainly for long-term or mid-term diseases. There's no point advertising for a certain brand of flu-shot because it is short term and therefore, not very profitable to advertise.
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Hmm.. No.. That is one of the primary motivators that gets new drugs developed. If you don't want these new drugs, don't buy them. However, don't interfere with my rights to buy them by placing regulations on business that stifles innovation so NO ONE can have the drug because it was never developed. Do you really want Congress deciding which drugs will be developed and which ones won't? If you think it's expensive to buy drugs, try buying a member of Congress sometime (and, usually, even if you were succes