7 ms·
I feel the same way about prescription drugs. Those are for doctors to prescribe, not for patients to request.
by wccrawford 9y ago
I feel the same way about prescription drugs. Those are for doctors to prescribe, not for patients to request.
- rorykoehler 9y agoThat's why advertising drugs is banned world over.
- rastaaaaaa 9y agoNot in the USA apparently.
- r_singh 9y agoYes, Rx marketing to general public is legal in the USA, but the ads are regulated.
- rorykoehler 9y agoLots of things banned world over are legal in the USA.
- pjmlp 9y agoLike carrying guns as if we were still in 1800.
- kurthr 9y agoThe first percussion cap for a cartridge wasn't patented until 1807, not in common use until 1825-30 when the bolt action arrived, and not popularized until the Colt revolver in 1835. Rapid firing guns of more than ~6 shots didn't arrive in the US until the civil war.
- pjmlp 9y agoIf you prefer to be pedantic regarding English sentence construction, instead of the actual problem that costs lives every single year, > Like carrying guns as if we were still in the 19th century.
- kurthr 9y agoActually, it was a point about what the writers of the constitution considered arms in the meaning of the second amendment... they were muskets, not even revolvers much less semi-automatic weapons. I happen to be quite aware of the "actual problem", and I'd like to work with all people to solve it, since I know people who have been killed by fire arms... even if I am a pedant. What is your damage?
- rorykoehler 9y agoInteresting I would have thought it was much earlier. I had to look it up on wikipedia: >The first device identified as a gun, a bamboo tube that used gunpowder to fire a spear, appeared in China around AD 1000. The Chinese had previously invented gunpowder in the 9th century. & >English Privy Wardrobe accounts list "ribaldis", a type of cannon, in the 1340s, and siege guns were used by the English at Calais in 1346.The earliest surviving[clarification needed] firearm in Europe has been found from Otepää, Estonia and it dates to at least 1396. I think it's fair to say that guns have been around a lot longer than the USA has.
- jessaustin 9y agoPresumably children wouldn't write college essays about their experiences protesting the bamboo tube with a spear sticking out of it?
- Karunamon 9y agoIs the political flamebait really necessary? It is possible for reasonable people to disagree on the fundamental rights the USA recognizes its citizens have, but that is not a great topic for HN.
- pjmlp 9y agoDepends how much we care about other people's right to live.
- Karunamon 9y agoThis is also political flamebait :/
- jessaustin 9y agoDon't worry we also care about your right to sanctimonious speech.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jessaustin 9y agoUSA drug purchases fund most global drug research. That money comes from somewhere. It's fine for us to question whether this is the best way for drugs to be marketed in our nation, but for the rest of the world to do so seems a bit ungrateful?
- simias 9y agoIf people stop using these drugs if they're not advertised maybe they're not that useful in the first place? Isn't there enough money to be made selling real treatments for real diseases?
- jessaustin 9y agoThe answer to your first question is certainly "yes". Unfortunately the answer to the second is "no". No pharma executive ever got a bonus for saving lives.
- simias 9y agoThat doesn't make sense to me. If life-saving drugs don't make money and pharmas are purely rational actors trying to maximize profit why would they bother investing money into them anyway? Also "life-saving" is a high bar, I was merely talking about "useful". If you figure out a great remedy for baldness you might not save lives but you wont have any issue making billions selling it, advertising or not. If you only way to sell a drug is to convince people they need it in the first place then I think it ought to be illegal, yes. Look at the massive opioid crisis in the USA which stems in great part from pharma pushing drugs people didn't really need and getting them addicted. If that's the only way you can figure out to fund cancer research we have a big problem indeed.
- jessaustin 9y agoOpioids don't need marketing. Opioid aficionados will seek them out at great expense and difficulty. In a sense, that's good, because the question of appropriate pain management is complicated enough even without considering marketing. Physicians who didn't know that opioids were addictive before prescribing them weren't victims of irresponsible marketing; they were poor physicians. That isn't to say that pain shouldn't be treated, rather it is to say that treating pain is difficult and we've done a poor job so far. Part of that is vilification of opioid users, part of it is abdicating all decisions to physicians. When I was 13yo I was capable of saying "no I don't need another shot of Demerol" while barely conscious in a hospital bed. Just the same, as long as I live, I will never forget the first two shots I did receive. They were that great. But that isn't pharma; we've used opioids for centuries. When economic historians of the future consider the current era's pharma industry, they will marvel at how much money was spent for how little benefit. The cure to cancer will not come from pharma. (Quite possibly from biotech, but that's a different thing.) The incentives are wrong: cures are less valuable than indefinite treatments. Look how much they have to charge for the hep C cure. If that were a mere treatment, they could amortize their "research costs" over a lifetime. Even better than treatments that work are treatments that might work. One poor suffering patient might be prescribed 15 such, multiple times a day for the rest of her life. Still, for many hep C sufferers even an expensive cure is a good thing. Many other conditions respond in agreeable ways to some medicines for some patients some of the time. Maybe the research costs too much for some of them. One suspects that a more rational FDA process could cut costs for most drugs, but no one who would benefit from that has any control over the process itself. The whole edifice is a bit monstrous. Just the same, if the golden goose requires drug marketing, do we really want to do away with drug marketing?
- r_singh 9y agoRx advertising / marketing towards general public is banned in most countries. However, many countries allow for Rx drug advertising / marketing targeted towards consumers.
- dpark 9y agoWhat is the difference here? Aren't prescription drug consumers the general public?
- r_singh 9y agoPrescription drug consumers are a subset of the general public. But all of general public aren't prescription drug consumers.
- dpark 9y agoThat's essentially untrue in developed nations. Everyone has gotten a prescription at some point. Unless you mean to say that drug companies can advertise to prescription drug users for the specific window when they happen to be actively taking a prescription drug. Which seems rather difficult to manage and would require a massive privacy violation to achieve. Plus I'm not clear what the delivery mechanism would be unless you're just talking about inserts delivered with the drugs themselves.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- r_singh 9y agoThere seems to be a slight misunderstanding. What that means is that the particular Rx drug being advertised can only be advertised to consumers of that Rx drug in question. So insulin can only be advertised to people with diabetes. The interesting thing about this is that it leaves most of the power with the HCP. As for the delivery mechanism, there weren't too many options in the recent past, however, these days there are POC marketing companies like Outcome Health (and others) and a growing number of software applications are aware of their user's health condition / needs (with permission of course either explicitly or by virtue of the intended use, like apps for diabetes patients, etc.).
- briandear 9y agoGoing to disagree with you. Doctors often have incentives to prescribe certain drugs over others that aren’t necessarily the best drug. If it’s legal to advertise to physicians then it should be legal to advertise to consumers. Ultimately the consumer is in charge of their own health and should have a say in their drug choices. Let’s think of another industry — tires. Is a consumer typically an automotive engineer or a mechanic? Then why should it be legal to advertise tires to consumers? Ultimately a mechanic will have to install the tires. However, that certainly shouldn’t preclude a consumer making their preferences known. With meds, a doctor can always say no — and they should and do if it isn’t indicated for the particular affliction. The idea that consumers need to be shielded from information is a bit weird to me.
- Karunamon 9y agoFavorited. I can understand a certain amount of protectionism being necessary but this just plain smacks of deciding that I'm too stupid to make decisions in my own interest. It's a very peculiar, and very infuriating sort of nannying. That investing carries large amounts of risk isn't new or unknown to most. If you cash out your 401K and put it in AAPL, even a modest decline could eliminate your retirement. And those are the super-regulated "safe" investments as opposed to those super dodgy "not-safe" investments that are so awful you're not allowed to advertise for them anymore.
- moate 9y agoDo you have a medical degree? Then you're probably too stupid to properly make decisions in your best interest regarding medications/medical treatment. This does not mean that Doug the village doctor isn't in Novartis' pocket and trying to shill their pills, just that your area of expertise is not nearly as high enough to make an accurate diagnosis of the best way to treat an ailment through medication.
- conanbatt 9y ago> Do you have a medical degree? Then you're probably too stupid to properly make decisions in your best interest regarding medications/medical treatment. Funny you mention this case. Do you think the state should choose the doctor and facility you go to? For example, below a certain income, you only have access to a certain type of facilites. And what if the state said that you could only receive care from americans? because doctors outside of the US, even if they have international reputation and acclaim, or experience, or a great track record, you shouldn't be able to see them? What if the us forbid you to leave the country to buy meds somewhere else as well, or to get care outside. Beware: some of this are actually happening right now!
- wyager 9y agoDoctors aren’t, on average, as competent or on the ball as you think. They don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of every drug available.
- RightMillennial 9y agoA competent physician, like a competent programmer, doesn't need to have a every drug or library memorized. He needs adequate knowledge to know what to look for and where to find it.
- wyager 9y agoAgain, most physicians aren’t that competent. There’s an entire set of literature based around getting your doctor to think critically, because most of them have just done the professional equivalent of memorizing a bunch of flash cards. This is cheap and works for 90% of cases, but the result is that doctors don’t actually know (and don’t care to find out) about all the latest research relevant to the particular condition of one of their 1500 patients.
- forapurpose 9y ago> There’s an entire set of literature based around getting your doctor to think critically Sounds interesting; could you recommend something?
- gowld 9y agoUnfortunately, they tend to look at their pocketbooks and kickback offers.