3 ms·

Great news, so pharma companies could focus more on drugs itself and less on marketing. It's huge money waste with mysterious intention - if your drug is the be

Great news, so pharma companies could focus more on drugs itself and less on marketing. It's huge money waste with mysterious intention - if your drug is the best, doctors should use it anyway, and if it's bad but you can increase its usage with huge marketing campaign, then mankind just gets screwed for own money.

refurb 11y ago
if your drug is the best, doctors should use it anyway Amazingly that is untrue. Doctors have to know that it's the best drug and they often don't. Doctors are often creatures of habit. If I gave my last patient Crestor and it lowered their cholesterol, why not try the same with the next patient?
- chrisan 11y ago
  > Amazingly that is untrue. Doctors have to know that it's the best drug and they often don't. Doctors are often creatures of habit. If I gave my last patient Crestor and it lowered their cholesterol, why not try the same with the next patient? What you need is a clinical pharmacist not an advertisement. I am perhaps biased as my wife is a clinical pharmacist and one of her biggest things is to make the doctors use evidenced based practice rather than "this worked before" or "I saw this on TV". The amazing part is despite actual studies (all readily available on pubmed etc) she gets ignored and the doctor does what he/she wants anyways. Some older male doctors (who perhaps lack some respect) will literally throw the printed out studies my wife brings to them in the trash.
  - refurb 11y ago
    Thanks for sharing that. I think you summed it up nicely. Physicians do have a need for information about new drugs. They simply don't have the time to do the research themselves. That said, the crux of the argument is around how that information is transmitted. DTC seems less than ideal which I can understand.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
> if your drug is the best, doctors should use it anyway, and if it's bad but you can increase its usage with huge marketing campaign, then mankind just gets screwed for own money. That's 100% true for everything - just replace "drug" with "product". As soon as an advertisement is leaving the point of informing about product's existence and features, it's starting to trick people into chosing a suboptimal option.
- agarden 11y ago
  If people acted like homo economicus, that would be true. But people are so irrational, that sometimes they need to be convinced to do the right thing for the wrong reason, no? In other words, a given advertisement might be tricking people into choosing the optimal option.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    > In other words, a given advertisement might be tricking people into choosing the optimal option. It could be so, in principle, but do you trust people who profit off not having your best interest in mind to do that?

refurb 11y ago

if your drug is the best, doctors should use it anyway Amazingly that is untrue. Doctors have to know that it's the best drug and they often don't. Doctors are often creatures of habit. If I gave my last patient Crestor and it lowered their cholesterol, why not try the same with the next patient?

chrisan 11y ago
> Amazingly that is untrue. Doctors have to know that it's the best drug and they often don't. Doctors are often creatures of habit. If I gave my last patient Crestor and it lowered their cholesterol, why not try the same with the next patient? What you need is a clinical pharmacist not an advertisement. I am perhaps biased as my wife is a clinical pharmacist and one of her biggest things is to make the doctors use evidenced based practice rather than "this worked before" or "I saw this on TV". The amazing part is despite actual studies (all readily available on pubmed etc) she gets ignored and the doctor does what he/she wants anyways. Some older male doctors (who perhaps lack some respect) will literally throw the printed out studies my wife brings to them in the trash.
- refurb 11y ago
  Thanks for sharing that. I think you summed it up nicely. Physicians do have a need for information about new drugs. They simply don't have the time to do the research themselves. That said, the crux of the argument is around how that information is transmitted. DTC seems less than ideal which I can understand.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

> if your drug is the best, doctors should use it anyway, and if it's bad but you can increase its usage with huge marketing campaign, then mankind just gets screwed for own money. That's 100% true for everything - just replace "drug" with "product". As soon as an advertisement is leaving the point of informing about product's existence and features, it's starting to trick people into chosing a suboptimal option.

agarden 11y ago
If people acted like homo economicus, that would be true. But people are so irrational, that sometimes they need to be convinced to do the right thing for the wrong reason, no? In other words, a given advertisement might be tricking people into choosing the optimal option.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  > In other words, a given advertisement might be tricking people into choosing the optimal option. It could be so, in principle, but do you trust people who profit off not having your best interest in mind to do that?