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Topic: Drug companies spend more on marketing than on research.

Victor Von Mediaboy
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 554

posted 12 July 2001 12:56 PM

http://cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view.cgi?/news/2001/07/11/Consumers/drugcosts_010711

From: A thread has merit only if I post to it. So sayeth VVMB! | Registered: May 2001 | IP: Logged

Trisha
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 387

posted 16 July 2001 12:33 PM

I have become increasingly "annoyed" with the TV ads for prescription drugs, especially those for arthritis. Celebrex and Vioxx are not covered under most drug plans and cost approximately $100 per month, for instance. Also, most of the drugs advertised are in the same category.

I have a few questions concerning these ads. The first is why advertise to the public something that has to be prescribed? If you talk to your doctor about any of these, they have no more information than you do on them, the pharmacists a little more. So, where is the purpose? Second, the cost of this advertising could be much better applied to making these drugs more affordable to those who need them since the advertising cannot possibly change the number of people using them because they are not an impulse purchase item. Again, they have to be prescribed by a doctor.

I am aware that we all have to partner with our doctors with our health care, but pushing a doctor to give us medication he knows little about is not a good idea IMHO. Also, I don't believe many of these drugs have been thoroughly tested for a long enough time span, look at the PhenPhen and related drug problems. These ads are designed to impress us, then, as an afterthought as demanded by law, they tell us the most dangerous side effects.

I very much object to the drug companies being able to do this sort of advertising. I think over-the-counter medications, being consumer's choice items, need to be advertised but not prescription-only drugs, and especially in such a way that tries to make you feel guilty about not using them.

From: Thunder Bay, Ontario | Registered: Apr 2001 | IP: Logged

Croesus_Krept
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 964

posted 03 August 2001 02:20 AM

grow your own darling - i do...

c.....

From: Taiwan | Registered: Jul 2001 | IP: Logged

clersal
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 370

posted 03 August 2001 09:59 AM

This might be the wrong thread but I did not want to put it in complaints as I think here is more apt.

Yesterday morning I went to the pharmacy to have a prescription filled. The pharmacist asked if I could come back later as the computer was down with a virus. I returned at 5:30 and they had closed the bloody drug store. Same problem, no computer. The biggest problem here is that this is a small village where a great deal of psychiatric out patients live. What happened to them? The next drugstore is 20 miles away.

It seems incredible to me that a pharmacy will close because their bloody computer has a bug. With all the money they rake in one would think that there would be some kind of back up system. If not, use the old pen and pencil trick and write everything down until the problem is fixed. This is the pits.

From: Canton Marchand, Québec | Registered: Apr 2001 | IP: Logged

skdadl
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 478

posted 03 August 2001 10:30 AM

It's another peek, isn't it, clersal, at how vulnerable we've become in this ole wired world. It's not hard to imagine this sort of weak reaction to a breakdown of our machines on a much greater scale. We need some new form of exercise to keep alive our memories of how to survive independent of the machines, don't you think?

From: gone | Registered: May 2001 | IP: Logged

Mandos
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 888

posted 03 August 2001 10:34 AM

Again, even further tangentially, I like science fiction stories where massive technology is used for the Really Big Things, but the characters do everything manually in daily life. It's really a dying breed of SF, often from writers who started in the depth of the Cold War and the space race.

From: There, there. | Registered: Jun 2001 | IP: Logged

Victor Von Mediaboy
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 554

posted 03 August 2001 10:39 AM

Ever read The Difference Engine? Steampunk is a very cool genre...

From: A thread has merit only if I post to it. So sayeth VVMB! | Registered: May 2001 | IP: Logged

Mandos
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 888

posted 03 August 2001 10:55 AM

(Continuing the tangent...) I haven't read much steampunk, but I will eventually get to The Difference Engine. I want to get my hands on Neal Stephenson's latest book, though.

(begins blurb/plug for recently discovered author)
I was thinking more along the lines of Lois McMaster Bujold and her Miles Vorkosigan novels. Bujold is really the Jane Austen of science fiction. Space adventures in a baroque setting. Basically, the rest of the galaxy is all cyberpunkish, sophisticated and egalitarian. Lord Miles Vorkosigan, however, is a physically disabled young man in the sexist, feudal Barrayaran Empire, a militaristic society that used to slaughter its disabled children at birth. Miles' curious status as an aristocrat, a disabled man, and the son of a foreign woman from the most egalitarian society in the galaxy (who married his father after defeating him in war), contributes to a series of witty interstellar adventures with tons of subtle feminist (etc.) commentary. Half of it on a planet where people still ride horses.

From: There, there. | Registered: Jun 2001 | IP: Logged

Pimji
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 228

posted 06 August 2001 11:16 AM

I work in private health care as an orthodontic technician in a dental lab. The lab owners would love to market directly to the public. The appliances we want to direct market aren't the ones that will help patients but the ones that make us the most money. This is why we are hearing more about treatments for snoring. Oral devices for treating snoring have a built in life span so the patient will have to continually buy new ones. They aren't guaranteed to work. The only reason they are made with any ridgitity is so the dentist doesn't have have the patient come back to often for repairs and have them take up precious chair time.
Reasearch into these appliances is not for patient benefit but to get around the competition's patents and gain market share. Just because a dentist prescribes one of these devices could mean that a lab sales rep did a good sales pitch.

My suggestion to stop snoring is to quit smoking drinking and lose weight. It's cheaper than spending the $1200-2000 for a hunk of plastic that realigns your TMJ.

[ August 06, 2001: Message edited by: Pimji ]

From: South of Ottawa | Registered: Apr 2001 | IP: Logged

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