New York's HIV experiment

tharkûn · Post by **tharkûn** » 2004-12-01 12:10pm

Truth be told be told some drug advertisement is likely a good thing. Medicating certain conditions, like high cholesterol, is ludicriously cheaper than letting the condition fester and ending up more people going in for open heart or dying "early". Advertising does bring undiagnosised conditions to the attention of the patient and the doctor and does end up saving lives and money.

Some of the advertising is obvious BS, particularly some of these pyschoactive drug commericials. But some of it probably is quite effective healthcare, these commercials would be wholly redundant if people were informed, healthconscience, and proactive as a general rule ... unfortunately most people aren't.

If you really want to cut down on BS prescription drug use, then the best point of attack is at the doctors who prescribe. First require a set of standardized forms for doctors to maintain for each prescription. Second have periodic audits of the files and a random sampling of second opinions. If a doctor is found to be prescribing drugs friviliously, then remove his right to prescribe.

You cannot remove the profit motive from medicine without squelching the rate of R&D and hence ultimately costing lives. For reigning in the drug companies we need to do exactly what was done with the meat packers and all those other health unconscious companies back in the day: provide a strong profit penalty for those who don't provide good medicine. If they are found to be engaging in grossly unethical practices, then make it a point of law that punative fines (not lawsuits) are going to be levied.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2004-12-01 01:33pm

Frank Hipper wrote:and filthy fucking Smilin' Bob Enzyte commercials I see to link the increase.

To be 100% fair, Enzyte is a quack product not made or marketed by any reputable pharmaceutical company. Its only known effect (and this, oddly, brings us back to Dalton's point) is to cause diarrhea.

Come to think of it, I haven't seen those awful commercials in a while. Did they get shut down by the consumer protection agency, or is that too much for which to ask?

Crayz9000 · Post by **Crayz9000** » 2004-12-01 01:51pm

Sounds like the US pharmaceutical industry is more or less falling back to the old patent drug schemes...

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2004-12-01 02:15pm

Dalton wrote:Seems that most drugs these days have side effects that are just as bad as the condition they're supposed to relieve - in fact, nearly every medication I can think of "may cause diarrhea". Someone I know was on a certain birth control pill that caused severe migraines, nausea and blackouts, and my cousin's epilepsy medication rotted her teeth so badly that she's going to get them all pulled and replaced with dentures and she *still* has seizures. Pharmaceutical corporations are just like any other, just out to make a buck, which is probably why importing drugs from Canada isn't legal with some flimsy quality-control excuse. It's despicable, and this unannounced testing of experimental drugs on children is even more so.

THough to be absolutely fair, not that many pharmaceuticals deserve it, when you see that long list of possible side-effects to a drug, it doesn't mean that the drug gives you an increased risk necessarily. By law, drug companies have to report every single thing that happens to their human study groups, from them getting a headache to the shits to a heart attack, even if the drug had absolutely nothing to do with it. A person may have gotten the shits from some shady chili they ate and if it happens during the human trials, the drug companies have to say that the drug "may cause diarrhea" in advertising, by law. Whether they follow the law is a good question, but everything nowadays the long litany of possible side-effects is due to legal restrictions.

salm · Post by **salm** » 2004-12-01 03:18pm

tharkûn wrote:Truth be told be told some drug advertisement is likely a good thing. Medicating certain conditions, like high cholesterol, is ludicriously cheaper than letting the condition fester and ending up more people going in for open heart or dying "early". Advertising does bring undiagnosised conditions to the attention of the patient and the doctor and does end up saving lives and money.

the existance of such conditions could be advertised as opposed to advertising a specific med.
like instead of advertising bayer aspirin you´d advertise that headaches exist. (ok, that´s a stupid example but i couldn´t think of a med med that´s supposed to cure a serious and widely unknown ill.)

one might ask who would pay for that. it could be payed by tax money or the government could simply force the pharma industry to pay for it.

tharkûn · Post by **tharkûn** » 2004-12-01 10:42pm

the existance of such conditions could be advertised as opposed to advertising a specific med.
like instead of advertising bayer aspirin you´d advertise that headaches exist. (ok, that´s a stupid example but i couldn´t think of a med med that´s supposed to cure a serious and widely unknown ill.)

one might ask who would pay for that. it could be payed by tax money or the government could simply force the pharma industry to pay for it.

Sure but then you get peices of crap out for advertising. The profit motive is quite effective at inspiring people to find effective ways to get information across and getting the audience to listen. Think about the difference between federally mandated surgeon general's warnings on cigarettes and cigarette advertising.

The other thing is how do you tell if your message is working. Pharma can easily do so, their sales go up. If the goverment just makes public health announcements you are looking at months in turnaround.

I'm not saying you couldn't eventually get it to work, but the profit motive is extremely hard to replicate. Likewise the cost of the bloody massive lawsuits that pharma will drag the US government through and the stock shock that will hit cannot be overlooked. Some more regulation seems to be in order, but I think we should try the soft touch approach first rather than the sledge hammer.

salm · Post by **salm** » 2004-12-02 06:25am

tharkûn wrote: Sure but then you get peices of crap out for advertising. The profit motive is quite effective at inspiring people to find effective ways to get information across and getting the audience to listen. Think about the difference between federally mandated surgeon general's warnings on cigarettes and cigarette advertising.

The other thing is how do you tell if your message is working. Pharma can easily do so, their sales go up. If the goverment just makes public health announcements you are looking at months in turnaround.

I'm not saying you couldn't eventually get it to work, but the profit motive is extremely hard to replicate. Likewise the cost of the bloody massive lawsuits that pharma will drag the US government through and the stock shock that will hit cannot be overlooked. Some more regulation seems to be in order, but I think we should try the soft touch approach first rather than the sledge hammer.

actually non profit adds like the anti aids condom adds seem to have worked quite well. while i can´t provide any evidence that it really helped i can say that everybody knows the slogans of said adds.

methinks that could work for other things like certain deceases as well.

the warnings on cigarette packs are actually quite different from cigarette adds. firstly there´s the scale of course. you can´t compare stamp sized warnings with 10X10 meter sized posters.
furthermore they only adress people who already smoke. smokers usually know about the risk and smoke anyway.

adds about illnesses would not try to get somebody to quit an addiction but simply inform people about said illnesses.

tharkûn · Post by **tharkûn** » 2004-12-02 03:55pm

I am not familiar with the anti-aids ads, as a general rule public service announcements tend to be far lower budget and far less effective than commericial adds.

Again I'm not saying it couldn't be done, just that I doubt it could easily and effortlessly done. Given the merry hell an outright ban would play with the stock market, if nothing else, I prefer to try a soft touch first.

salm · Post by **salm** » 2004-12-03 01:51pm

tharkûn wrote:I am not familiar with the anti-aids ads, as a general rule public service announcements tend to be far lower budget and far less effective than commericial adds.
Again I'm not saying it couldn't be done, just that I doubt it could easily and effortlessly done. Given the merry hell an outright ban would play with the stock market, if nothing else, I prefer to try a soft touch first.

you don´t have that in the states? interesting. over here everybody knows these two adds:

that are the anti aids and anti drug adds.

the aids add is financed by the federal office of health education
and the drug add is finance by a club fouded by a famous soccer player.

both non profit organisations. it´s possible.