Drug advertising.

[Ishmael]

I just don't get it. Perhaps I never will.

I, like everyone else, see's the ads on TV telling me how this new drug will abate 'plaque psoriasis', clear up my complexion, or the best of all, help me lose weight.

Then they go into the contra-indications. Spontaneous diarrhea, incontinence, extreme flatulence, blindness, stroke, cancer, death. Yeah buddy, give me some of that shit.

For the life of me I can't figure out why these ads are working.

Ishmael

 

[eyer]

Primal, human insecurity...

...combined with with an all-out attack of big-boy peer pressure.

The weak hardly have a chance...

...Nature rules and PT Barnum smiles.

 

[crotch_cricket]

herion makes you drink out of toilets.
people buy it in spite of the lack of prime time advertising.

 

[Johnny_Ray_Wilson]

I think, by law, they are required to list the possible side effects of any drug that specifically targets whatever ill you want the drug to cure. However, like you Ishmael, every time I hear the long list of side effects, I think "Well, there goes that great idea"

 

[thør]

n, or the best of all, help me lose weight.

Then they go into the contra-indications. Spontaneous diarrhea, incontinence, extreme flatulence, blindness, stroke, cancer, death. Yeah buddy, give me some of that shit.

Oh, that will never happen to me.........

 

[Ishmael]

Oh, that will never happen to me.........

*chuckle* You won't live that long.

Ishmael

 

[thør]

*chuckle* You won't live that long.

Ishmael

Thanks, doc.......

 

[CHNOPS]

*chuckle* You won't live that long.

Ishmael

^^^

This was funny.

Signing it killed it, though.

 

[CandiCame]

Here's how I decide whether or not to take/do a drug- for Rx and street.

"Do the pros outweight the cons for me right now?"

That's the extent of it.

I have Rx meds I'm supposed to take for the insanity, but they kncok me out within 20 minutes of taking them, so I don't. Yet, if I had a joint right now, I'd smoke that shit. Because pot has no side effects. I'm not gonna smoke the joint and fall asleep, like I would with the pill, but both would calm my ass down. I'm willing to risk the throat cancer, carsonogens in the blood and whatnot. I'm not willing to risk losing half the day tomorrow and walking around groggy for the other half. On days where I don't care to risk that, I will take my meds.

And a lot of those side effects only happen for certain people. Like another one of my RX says it can increase sex drive, appetite, and give you headaches, but I've been taking it for a month and my head feels fine, and I've not noticed my sex drive go up. I do eat a lot more then I used to... But I think it's because I quit smoking.

Wait, dude, smoking answers this question. People buy something that says tells you on the label that if used properly will give you a slow lingering death. If they'll do that, they aren't gonna give a shit that they might get a headache.

 

[Ishmael]

Thanks, doc.......

np, stick with the 'fun' drugs as long as you can. Life is going to kill you soon enough.

Ishmael

 

[CandiCame]

np, stick with the 'fun' drugs as long as you can. Life is going to kill you soon enough.

Ishmael

We all die. I plan to deserve it.

Anti-drug people bother me with that, "Have fun killing yourselves" bullshit.

Don't live in this culture and tell me I'm killing myself, then go eat your factory farm meat, breath your polluted air, and suck down the caffeine like it's going out of style.

We all die. No one gets out alive. We're all just choosing how we want to die. Be it from the chemicals in your lungs, the hormones in your meat, or the pesticides in your salad, no one is clean, no one is pure, and they can't hang me twice.

 

[Ishmael]

We all die. I plan to deserve it.

Anti-drug people bother me with that, "Have fun killing yourselves" bullshit.

Don't live in this culture and tell me I'm killing myself, then go eat your factory farm meat, breath your polluted air, and suck down the caffeine like it's going out of style.

We all die. No one gets out alive. We're all just choosing how we want to die. Be it from the chemicals in your lungs, the hormones in your meat, or the pesticides in your salad, no one is clean, no one is pure, and they can't hang me twice.

What a philosopher.

Thanks for the update.

Ishmael

 

[warrior queen]

I just had to shoot a perfectly good 2-tooth, and lost both the lambs.
Drugs? Death?
Fuck it - I'm gonna have another bourbon.

 

[Liar]

What I don't get are ads for prescription drugs. "Ask your doctor about..." I'm pretty sure they didn't sign up for med school only to be second guessed by a fifteen second snake oil infotainment I stumbled upon couch zapping the other night. Most of it is same shit different brand anyway.

 

[Sean]

I just don't get it. Perhaps I never will.

I, like everyone else, see's the ads on TV telling me how this new drug will abate 'plaque psoriasis', clear up my complexion, or the best of all, help me lose weight.

Then they go into the contra-indications. Spontaneous diarrhea, incontinence, extreme flatulence, blindness, stroke, cancer, death. Yeah buddy, give me some of that shit.

For the life of me I can't figure out why these ads are working.

Ishmael

Because you haven't got a civilised health care system, people self medicate and will try any shit rather than bankrupt themselves due to your fucked up money milking machine. There's a reason you don't see a hundredth of the drug ads in Europe that you do in the states.

 

[Morwen]

You will eat the soma, or you are a terrorist.

It's not difficult.

 

[lovetoread]

You take the drugs, even with the side effects, to try to have a semi normal life.

If I could inhale weed and have it take of the hives, that would solve a lot of issues.

 

[miles]

Some of them are creating demand where none previously existed.

 

[LadyFunkenstein]

The typical US doctor is a pill-pushing, money-grubbing ghoul. The ads are on because they work. Our "health" care system isn't about health at all, it is about managing chronic illnesses through the use of pharmaceuticals. The rise of cancers, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, all are problems of our own making, and we throw pills at it instead of admitting that we have poisoned our environment and food supply.

 

[koalabear]

Do not worry, the FDA is on the job.

 

[Liar]

The typical US doctor is a pill-pushing, money-grubbing ghoul. The ads are on because they work. Our "health" care system isn't about health at all, it is about managing chronic illnesses through the use of pharmaceuticals. The rise of cancers, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, all are problems of our own making, and we throw pills at it instead of admitting that we have poisoned our environment and food supply.

But that's the point of my point. The doctor is the pill pusher. If he's not corrupt, he'll prescribe whatever's best for me. If he's corrupt he'll prescribe whatever's best for the drug co that owns him.

Either way, pill ads directed at me are wasted.

 

[glynndah]

If you raise enough of a fuss about trying the latest drugs, coincidentally almost always more expensive than the standard ones, a majority of doctors will give in and prescribe it for you.

As for all those cautions about drug side effects? I think most people stop listening to the warnings when they think they're found something that'll cure all their ills.

 

[JohnnySavage]

A lot of the use of pills is a crutch, in my opinion, but a crutch sometimes helps. Every day for the past 30 years I've taken about a dozen vitamins and supplements. Every doctor I've ever seen tells me I'm pissing away my money (literally). But... I think they work and our mental state affects our health.

More Chromium please!

 

[LadyFunkenstein]

But that's the point of my point. The doctor is the pill pusher. If he's not corrupt, he'll prescribe whatever's best for me. If he's corrupt he'll prescribe whatever's best for the drug co that owns him.

Either way, pill ads directed at me are wasted.

I find it amusing when people claim that ads directed at them are a waste. How naive you are.

The ads create a culture in which being over-medicated is normal. So for instance, it seems perfectly normal to take medication for high blood pressure, when most people could simply lose weight. High blood pressure medication has side effects such as depression or erectile dysfunction, which leads people to take more medication. A dozen or so companies distribute all of the drugs so it doesn't matter whether you respond to the specific ad you see, it's the normalization of drugs that is the goal. And it IS working.

Edit to provide a quote and link:

"We're seeing a dramatization of health problems that many people used to manage without prescription drugs," said Dominick L. Frosch, Ph.D., lead author of the study and an assistant professor of general internal medicine and health services research at UCLA. "The DTC ads send the message that you need drugs to manage these problems, and that without medication your life will be less enjoyable, more painful and maybe even out of control."

And an abstract to his study:

http://www.annfammed.org/content/5/1/6.short

 

[Peregrinator]

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/arc...th-about-the-drug-companies/?pagination=false

In the past two years, we have started to see, for the first time, the beginnings of public resistance to rapacious pricing and other dubious practices of the pharmaceutical industry. It is mainly because of this resistance that drug companies are now blanketing us with public relations messages. And the magic words, repeated over and over like an incantation, are research, innovation, and American. Research. Innovation. American. It makes a great story.

But while the rhetoric is stirring, it has very little to do with reality. First, research and development (R&D) is a relatively small part of the budgets of the big drug companies—dwarfed by their vast expenditures on marketing and administration, and smaller even than profits. In fact, year after year, for over two decades, this industry has been far and away the most profitable in the United States. (In 2003, for the first time, the industry lost its first-place position, coming in third, behind “mining, crude oil production,” and “commercial banks.”) The prices drug companies charge have little relationship to the costs of making the drugs and could be cut dramatically without coming anywhere close to threatening R&D.

Second, the pharmaceutical industry is not especially innovative. As hard as it is to believe, only a handful of truly important drugs have been brought to market in recent years, and they were mostly based on taxpayer-funded research at academic institutions, small biotechnology companies, or the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The great majority of “new” drugs are not new at all but merely variations of older drugs already on the market. These are called “me-too” drugs. The idea is to grab a share of an established, lucrative market by producing something very similar to a top-selling drug. For instance, we now have six statins (Mevacor, Lipitor, Zocor, Pravachol, Lescol, and the newest, Crestor) on the market to lower cholesterol, all variants of the first. As Dr. Sharon Levine, associate executive director of the Kaiser Permanente Medical Group, put it,

If I’m a manufacturer and I can change one molecule and get another twenty years of patent rights, and convince physicians to prescribe and consumers to demand the next form of Prilosec, or weekly Prozac instead of daily Prozac, just as my patent expires, then why would I be spending money on a lot less certain endeavor, which is looking for brand-new drugs?4

Third, the industry is hardly a model of American free enterprise. To be sure, it is free to decide which drugs to develop (me-too drugs instead of innovative ones, for instance), and it is free to price them as high as the traffic will bear, but it is utterly dependent on government-granted monopolies—in the form of patents and Food and Drug Administration (FDA)–approved exclusive marketing rights. If it is not particularly innovative in discovering new drugs, it is highly innovative—and aggressive—in dreaming up ways to extend its monopoly rights.

Angell's book is an eye-opener, and very, very heavily documented.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Truth-About-Drug-Companies/dp/0375760946