4 ms·

My wife was nearly a victim of this particular drug in the late 1990s. They have no idea how much shit they caused people by withholding this information. Seve

by buffoon 11y ago

My wife was nearly a victim of this particular drug in the late 1990s. They have no idea how much shit they caused people by withholding this information. Several years of people's lives destroyed. I doubt they will acknowledge it or even apologise let alone offer compensation. When I say they, I don't mean the faceless corporation or brand, but the individuals who made this decision, ran the initial trials and pushed it to start with.

kaffeemitsahne 11y ago
"They have no idea how much shit they caused people by withholding this information." They do.
phkahler 11y ago
>> When I say they, I don't mean the faceless corporation or brand, but the individuals who made this decision... Hopefully they're scared shitless right now because of the talk around the GM recall case. Politicians are throwing around the idea of criminal charges because they didn't disclose safety problems soon enough. My first thought was "what about pharma?" Not sure what I think of the idea, but some folks in pharma are certain to be following that case.
- seiji 11y ago
  Medical problems are difficult to class action because they are so distributed and so private. Earlier this year a doctor killed a family member of mine by telling her, across multiple visits in the same week, her swollen ankle was a sprain and to just rest. It was actually a blood clot due to being overweight and on birth control pills. The day after her last visit, she threw a PE and died alone on her couch. Another doctor told another family member his chest pains were end-stage cancer and he would die within a month. A second opinion showed it was mesothelioma treatable by state-of-the-art radiotherapy delivered by only one lab in the country. He's still alive two years later. I've probably got another half dozen stories just from immediate relatives about doctors seemingly doing random or nonsensical things instead of driving proper diagnoses and/or treatments forward. Doctors are in general awful unless you can afford to buy an entire private "council of doctors" to consult and berate each other into actually getting shit done.
  - phkahler 11y ago
    That's unfortunate and sad. But we were talking about researchers and bureaucrats with data, whose job is making data driven decisions, and then ignoring or hiding some of the data.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - Asbostos 11y ago
      It's true it's a bit off topic, but I think it's closely related. Both doctors and researchers are causing deaths and neither has any accountability. Doctors are perhaps a bigger problem. In general, they're simply not competent at their job as seen by examples like this. There are no checks and balances to keep them competent. Perhaps their job really is too difficult for a human to do but then they should be honest about that and tell the patient "I don't really understand your condition, and all I can think of is ..."
- interesting_att 11y ago
  The Big Pharma lobby is easily the most powerful lobby in the country. Most other industries have at least part of one party against it. Many (but far from all) democratic politicians are critical of the oil industry, Monsanto, the military industry, finance industry, prison industry, Walmart, etc. With the pharmaceutical industry, however, there is no such check. To go against Pharma as a Republican is to go against big business. To go against Pharma as a Democrat is to go against "Science." Add millions and millions spent on lobbying and deceptive PR, you have a very powerful lobby.
  - tsotha 11y ago
    >With the pharmaceutical industry, however, there is no such check. To go against Pharma as a Republican is to go against big business. To go against Pharma as a Democrat is to go against "Science." There are very, very few true ideologues in Congress. The real reason is more prosaic - they won't cross big pharma because they need money for reelection. Incidentally, the other industries you've listed don't have parties against them. They spread money around on both sides of the aisle.
    - interesting_att 11y ago
      Many Democrats are against the Keystone pipeline and are for solar subsidies. Many Democrats are against the big banks (Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren). Military defense contractors pay a lot, but many Democrats vote against military expenditures. How many Democrats are critical of pharmaceutical companies? Barely any.
      - tsotha 11y ago
        It's all play acting. They figure out how many votes they need to satisfy the people with the money, and any excess is allowed to vote the other way. Let's say the Congress wants to pass something the banks like, and they have 50 more votes than they need. The party leaders figure out who represents districts that won't like the legislation and those representatives get to vote against. In the end it's a super close vote, on paper, so 49 Congressmen can go back to their district and say "Gosh, I did my best, but we just couldn't stop it." Look at the Iran deal. Treaties need 60 votes to pass the Senate. Now, Republican voters don't like the treaty, but the Republican establishment wants it to pass. So what do they do? They pass a bill that assumes consent and sets up a second vote that will only stop the treaty if 60 vote against it. Then they go back to their districts and pretend the second vote was the real one.
mzs 11y ago
I am very sorry to read this but very happy that your wife pulled through back then.

by buffoon 11y ago

kaffeemitsahne 11y ago

"They have no idea how much shit they caused people by withholding this information." They do.

phkahler 11y ago

>> When I say they, I don't mean the faceless corporation or brand, but the individuals who made this decision... Hopefully they're scared shitless right now because of the talk around the GM recall case. Politicians are throwing around the idea of criminal charges because they didn't disclose safety problems soon enough. My first thought was "what about pharma?" Not sure what I think of the idea, but some folks in pharma are certain to be following that case.

seiji 11y ago
Medical problems are difficult to class action because they are so distributed and so private. Earlier this year a doctor killed a family member of mine by telling her, across multiple visits in the same week, her swollen ankle was a sprain and to just rest. It was actually a blood clot due to being overweight and on birth control pills. The day after her last visit, she threw a PE and died alone on her couch. Another doctor told another family member his chest pains were end-stage cancer and he would die within a month. A second opinion showed it was mesothelioma treatable by state-of-the-art radiotherapy delivered by only one lab in the country. He's still alive two years later. I've probably got another half dozen stories just from immediate relatives about doctors seemingly doing random or nonsensical things instead of driving proper diagnoses and/or treatments forward. Doctors are in general awful unless you can afford to buy an entire private "council of doctors" to consult and berate each other into actually getting shit done.
- phkahler 11y ago
  That's unfortunate and sad. But we were talking about researchers and bureaucrats with data, whose job is making data driven decisions, and then ignoring or hiding some of the data.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - Asbostos 11y ago
    It's true it's a bit off topic, but I think it's closely related. Both doctors and researchers are causing deaths and neither has any accountability. Doctors are perhaps a bigger problem. In general, they're simply not competent at their job as seen by examples like this. There are no checks and balances to keep them competent. Perhaps their job really is too difficult for a human to do but then they should be honest about that and tell the patient "I don't really understand your condition, and all I can think of is ..."
interesting_att 11y ago
The Big Pharma lobby is easily the most powerful lobby in the country. Most other industries have at least part of one party against it. Many (but far from all) democratic politicians are critical of the oil industry, Monsanto, the military industry, finance industry, prison industry, Walmart, etc. With the pharmaceutical industry, however, there is no such check. To go against Pharma as a Republican is to go against big business. To go against Pharma as a Democrat is to go against "Science." Add millions and millions spent on lobbying and deceptive PR, you have a very powerful lobby.
- tsotha 11y ago
  >With the pharmaceutical industry, however, there is no such check. To go against Pharma as a Republican is to go against big business. To go against Pharma as a Democrat is to go against "Science." There are very, very few true ideologues in Congress. The real reason is more prosaic - they won't cross big pharma because they need money for reelection. Incidentally, the other industries you've listed don't have parties against them. They spread money around on both sides of the aisle.
  - interesting_att 11y ago
    Many Democrats are against the Keystone pipeline and are for solar subsidies. Many Democrats are against the big banks (Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren). Military defense contractors pay a lot, but many Democrats vote against military expenditures. How many Democrats are critical of pharmaceutical companies? Barely any.
    - tsotha 11y ago
      It's all play acting. They figure out how many votes they need to satisfy the people with the money, and any excess is allowed to vote the other way. Let's say the Congress wants to pass something the banks like, and they have 50 more votes than they need. The party leaders figure out who represents districts that won't like the legislation and those representatives get to vote against. In the end it's a super close vote, on paper, so 49 Congressmen can go back to their district and say "Gosh, I did my best, but we just couldn't stop it." Look at the Iran deal. Treaties need 60 votes to pass the Senate. Now, Republican voters don't like the treaty, but the Republican establishment wants it to pass. So what do they do? They pass a bill that assumes consent and sets up a second vote that will only stop the treaty if 60 vote against it. Then they go back to their districts and pretend the second vote was the real one.

mzs 11y ago

I am very sorry to read this but very happy that your wife pulled through back then.