4 ms·

If physicians want people to stop buying into the conspiracy theories, they should start by ending their acceptance of free samples from the pharmaceutical indu

If physicians want people to stop buying into the conspiracy theories, they should start by ending their acceptance of free samples from the pharmaceutical industry. And while we're at it, they could stop displaying brochures from those companies in their offices, wearing the free lab coats, and so on. Or better yet, stop accepting sales calls from them altogether. And if they wanted this to be effective, they could push to make these ethical conditions part of the requirements for professional society membership and even state licensing. I am sympathetic with the frustrated physician whose patients refuse to accept that there are any benefits to drug treatments. I am also sympathetic with the patient who has spent his entire life hearing nothing but rosy assessments of drugs pumped out by the manufacturers even though many are completely ineffective and many others have been removed from the market because they proved unsafe. There are ways to improve this, but all three parties (as well as the FDA, in the US) are going to have to give. Drugmakers need to stop advertizing their products to patients and physicians. Physicians need to leverage their professional associations to ensure that they are properly informed about new drugs, from impartial sources. Patients need to insist that their physicians follow these guidelines and then trust them, or find a different physician that they can and will trust. And the FDA needs to be at once much more demanding: many drugs are approved despite little evidence, or unreliable evidence, of effectiveness; and much less so: the interminable process of approval needs to be cut way down, especially for drugs that have a narrow base of potential patients. Trust is gone, and needs to be repaired. You build or rebuild trust by being trustworthy, going far out of your way not only to show that you are worthy but to go well beyond what would otherwise be necessary. If you want patients to trust you, you need to do everything possible to earn it.

jeo1234 11y ago
If you ran a pharma company and had a new drug which helped reversed alzheimer's, which methods would you use to promote it? Target the patients, hospital admin, government officials? Or would it make more sense to talk with people who are trained in that field and deal with the people who will be impacted the most? Yes there are many cases of people being over-prescribed, and drugs being approved with debatable benefits, but communication between pharma and doctors can be very helpful. Given proper oversight of course.
- fredkbloggs 11y ago
  I would publish a paper on it and then offer the drug free of charge to any independent (MUST be wholly independent; no other compensation would be offered, and the condition of the offer is that they MUST publish regardless of the results) lab or clinic who wanted to test it. If my drug is really that good, I'm not going to have any trouble getting physicians interested in prescribing it. You're underestimating the level of professional interest in drugs that are genuinely effective. The reason it's become so hard to promote drugs is that most of them being introduced today are of little to no benefit, especially relative to side effects (and cost; poverty is a side effect). A drug that permanently and completely reversed Alzheimer's Disease in even 25% of patients would be an earth-shattering discovery and both clinicians and biologists would be lining up to study it. Likewise a drug that reversed its progress by 40% in 90% of patients for 10 years, etc. But most of what's coming out today is at best on the edge of statistical noise. When you've got a dozen companies spending tens of billions of dollars a year developing something that's 6% effective in 12% of the population and has serious side effects in 20%, according to a study with a 5% margin of error, it's going to be a very crowded, noisy market, because the noise is the only way to distinguish one very marginal treatment from another. Make something great and this problem will solve itself. The need for the AMA and other professional societies to involve themselves directly and provide impartial education to their members still exists, however. Some new treatments may benefit only a small number of people, and if the evidence for their effectiveness is strong enough, those professional societies should help make sure their members are aware of them. The converse applies, as well: members should be made aware of new drugs that are ineffective as well, and discouraged from prescribing them in most situations. The main point here is that the decisions physicians are making need be based entirely on the evidence of safety and effectiveness, not marketing hype or freebies. Again, I really don't see indications that genuinely great drugs are getting overlooked; if they are, it's probably because one overhyped drug is just like another to an overworked physician. A dramatic reduction in that noise will help with that.

jeo1234 11y ago

If you ran a pharma company and had a new drug which helped reversed alzheimer's, which methods would you use to promote it? Target the patients, hospital admin, government officials? Or would it make more sense to talk with people who are trained in that field and deal with the people who will be impacted the most? Yes there are many cases of people being over-prescribed, and drugs being approved with debatable benefits, but communication between pharma and doctors can be very helpful. Given proper oversight of course.

fredkbloggs 11y ago
I would publish a paper on it and then offer the drug free of charge to any independent (MUST be wholly independent; no other compensation would be offered, and the condition of the offer is that they MUST publish regardless of the results) lab or clinic who wanted to test it. If my drug is really that good, I'm not going to have any trouble getting physicians interested in prescribing it. You're underestimating the level of professional interest in drugs that are genuinely effective. The reason it's become so hard to promote drugs is that most of them being introduced today are of little to no benefit, especially relative to side effects (and cost; poverty is a side effect). A drug that permanently and completely reversed Alzheimer's Disease in even 25% of patients would be an earth-shattering discovery and both clinicians and biologists would be lining up to study it. Likewise a drug that reversed its progress by 40% in 90% of patients for 10 years, etc. But most of what's coming out today is at best on the edge of statistical noise. When you've got a dozen companies spending tens of billions of dollars a year developing something that's 6% effective in 12% of the population and has serious side effects in 20%, according to a study with a 5% margin of error, it's going to be a very crowded, noisy market, because the noise is the only way to distinguish one very marginal treatment from another. Make something great and this problem will solve itself. The need for the AMA and other professional societies to involve themselves directly and provide impartial education to their members still exists, however. Some new treatments may benefit only a small number of people, and if the evidence for their effectiveness is strong enough, those professional societies should help make sure their members are aware of them. The converse applies, as well: members should be made aware of new drugs that are ineffective as well, and discouraged from prescribing them in most situations. The main point here is that the decisions physicians are making need be based entirely on the evidence of safety and effectiveness, not marketing hype or freebies. Again, I really don't see indications that genuinely great drugs are getting overlooked; if they are, it's probably because one overhyped drug is just like another to an overworked physician. A dramatic reduction in that noise will help with that.