8 ms·

Cancer Hospital Ads Deceive Patients About Their Chances Of Survival

52 points by dsr12 8y ago

johnnycasino 8y ago
As a European it’s really unconceivable with what bs the free market will come up. Many other countries don’t have these issues and it seems not understandable how people would deliberately allow that to themselves.
teslabox 8y ago
I'm thinking of compiling a list of conditions that modern medicine treats well, and conditions where doctors try real hard to help their patients. For example, my neighbor wrecked his bicycle a few months ago. His doctors decided he needed a couple implants to help his leg bones grow back together optimally. I went over to look for my supposedly-delivered package this evening. He's recovering, slowly. Today he was hobbling around with a cane, and told of going to all the rehabilitation he can get (physical therapy, etc). I don't have formal medical training, but I think the rod in his leg was a reasonable intervention. Trauma surgeons do amazing work in keeping people alive who in prior centuries rapidly expired from similar injuries. I don't think modern medicine does well with multi-factorial conditions that develop over long periods of time. Cancer will be a much smaller business when someone figures out how to put it in a more appropriate context, rather than treat it with the tired old war metaphor.
- killjoywashere 8y ago
  > Cancer will be a much smaller business when someone figures out how to put it in a more appropriate context, rather than treat it with the tired old war metaphor. As a military officer who researches cancer and has lost a number of friends and family to both war and cancer, I think you may misunderstand both the way we live with and treat cancer, and what war is like. They are quite similar: all the outcomes take time off your life, there is often a significant risk to your life, there is liable to be a lot of blood at some point, and most of it is waiting to die while experts who know precious little more than you mutter and make pronouncements. (and I include myself in that definition of 'expert')
trixie_ 8y ago
Anyone feel kinda guilty working in tech? There's thousands and thousands of us trying to make the next app, putting forms on pages, making video games, shopping carts, crypto apps, etc.. We're smart enough to learn biotech and make advances, but the investment just isn't there. You're not going to find plentiful jobs in biotech. And starting up a new company is nowhere near as easy as it is in tech. I know almost no one from school that got into it. The one person I do know is working on genomic sequencing for race horses.. I hate to say it, but it really needs steady/consistent government funding - both training students and supporting companies. We could be way further along in biotech overall if there were actually a good number of us working on it. No sane investor is going to put money into R&D that will end up failing 9/10 times. And even if you hit on something, the healthcare system is so jacked, recouping your costs are just as hard as developing the product.
- scythe 8y ago
  A lot of people I know who worked in bio quit and went into tech, not because they couldn't get a job, but because they found bio research to be unbearably tedious. Perhaps the real market opportunity is in facilitating this kind of research, rather than just digging another mine.
  - killjoywashere 8y ago
    Oh it is, it soooo is.
- sneak 8y ago
  > No sane investor is going to put money into R&D that will end up failing 9/10 times. Do you know what website you are on? It’s closer to 9.5, I think.
  - ItsMe000001 8y ago
    But they invest in businesses that each have a plan that you know has a chance to work. Big difference between investing into the completely unknown. Besides, his 9/10 is way too optimistic. For basic research it is more like zero chance of profit because - it's just basic research to understand the problem and play around. More like particle research using expensive accelerators, not research on how can we use lasers to accomplish xyz (now that we already have them and know their physics exactly). Investors that invested into yet another Linux startup in the dot com boom had a high chance of failure - but those business all tried to be RedHat, not something completely unknown. And the subject of the business was an operating system, not something unknown. Your bet is on execution and the market, not on some yet unknown product.
toomanybeersies 8y ago
Related to this is addiction treatment, which in the USA is unregulated. Many treatment centers don't actually follow scientifically sound methods for treatment and are little more than an expensive summer camp for adults. John Oliver did a segment on the situation a couple of months ago, it's worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWQiXv0sn9Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWQiXv0sn9Y This kind of misleading advertising for privatized healthcare sickens me. It happens for all kinds of healthcare, individual anecdotes used as advertising for a treatment with a low chance or success, or for treatments with no proof of success at all. I saw it just today in the newspaper for a depression treatment service of some sort, which tried to disguise itself as a legitimate article, and essentially tried to guilt trip the reader into thinking that the best option for their friends and family who are at risk of suicide is to send them to this treatment facility.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  Given the role that social stuff plays in suicidal ideation, that's seriously disturbing.
DanielleMolloy 8y ago
Advertising prescription drugs to the general public is forbidden in the EU. Any over-the-counter mood-alternating substances, including sleeping pills must not be advertised, too (speaking of Germany, not sure whether this applies everywhere). In TV ads you mostly see over-the-counter painkillers and meds against digestion problems like flatulences. I have never seen an ad for a clinic either. Similar rules exist worldwide: http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/87/8/09-040809/en/ http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/87/8/09-040809/en/ The US and New Zealand seem to be the only countries allowing this kind of marketing. I find medicine or health-related ads from the US utterly disturbing. While such laws existed nationally since the beginning of the 20th century, the newer EU laws here were made specifically to prevent a situation like in the US (i.e. thanks for providing the useful bad example, guys).
- nicktelford 8y ago
  Not sure if it's EU-wide, but it's certainly the case in the UK too. Here, we predominantly see adverts for: basic over-the-counter painkillers, cold/flu "remedies" (winter) and hayfever/allergy remedies (summer). It's really quite jarring visiting the US and watching TV there. Not only because of the seriousness of the drugs they advertise, but also the sheer volume of pharmaceutical ads. I swear it often felt like 50% of the ads were for prescription drugs. Really weird.
  - isostatic 8y ago
    The U.S. spends 3 times as much per person on healthcare than the UK. Where do you think the money goes? Of course this gives "free" TV, that you pay for through more expensive medicine.
  - lawn 8y ago
    Same in Sweden.
  - Sharlin 8y ago
    As an aside, is the current prescription opioid epidemic in the US unique? I’ve certainly never heard of a nationwide drug problem stemming from legally prescribed drugs, as opposed to contraband ones. The closest thing I know is abuse of heroin replacement drugs, but the root cause in that is the heroin…
hasa 8y ago
TV-shop of medical treatments, LOL.
sconklin 8y ago
Not the only shady: https://www.argusleader.com/story/news/politics/2018/02/19/rounds-surrenders-18-500-illegal-campaign-contributions/352251002/ https://www.argusleader.com/story/news/politics/2018/02/19/r...
adamzk 8y ago
Dead people don't give testimonies.
YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
>> "There is a special place in hell for for-profit companies who provide unrealistic or false messages to sick and vulnerable patients in an effort to cajole their business." That may just be pessimistic, anti-social, misanthropic old me, but what incentive do people have nowadays, in a capitalist, free-market society, to care about the health of strangers when they can maximise their profits by exploiting their illness?
milesokeefe 8y ago
Non-amp link: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemlee/cancer-treatment-center-misleading-ads https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemlee/cancer-tr...

52 points by dsr12 8y ago

As a European it’s really unconceivable with what bs the free market will come up. Many other countries don’t have these issues and it seems not understandable how people would deliberately allow that to themselves.

teslabox 8y ago

I'm thinking of compiling a list of conditions that modern medicine treats well, and conditions where doctors try real hard to help their patients. For example, my neighbor wrecked his bicycle a few months ago. His doctors decided he needed a couple implants to help his leg bones grow back together optimally. I went over to look for my supposedly-delivered package this evening. He's recovering, slowly. Today he was hobbling around with a cane, and told of going to all the rehabilitation he can get (physical therapy, etc). I don't have formal medical training, but I think the rod in his leg was a reasonable intervention. Trauma surgeons do amazing work in keeping people alive who in prior centuries rapidly expired from similar injuries. I don't think modern medicine does well with multi-factorial conditions that develop over long periods of time. Cancer will be a much smaller business when someone figures out how to put it in a more appropriate context, rather than treat it with the tired old war metaphor.

killjoywashere 8y ago
> Cancer will be a much smaller business when someone figures out how to put it in a more appropriate context, rather than treat it with the tired old war metaphor. As a military officer who researches cancer and has lost a number of friends and family to both war and cancer, I think you may misunderstand both the way we live with and treat cancer, and what war is like. They are quite similar: all the outcomes take time off your life, there is often a significant risk to your life, there is liable to be a lot of blood at some point, and most of it is waiting to die while experts who know precious little more than you mutter and make pronouncements. (and I include myself in that definition of 'expert')

trixie_ 8y ago

Anyone feel kinda guilty working in tech? There's thousands and thousands of us trying to make the next app, putting forms on pages, making video games, shopping carts, crypto apps, etc.. We're smart enough to learn biotech and make advances, but the investment just isn't there. You're not going to find plentiful jobs in biotech. And starting up a new company is nowhere near as easy as it is in tech. I know almost no one from school that got into it. The one person I do know is working on genomic sequencing for race horses.. I hate to say it, but it really needs steady/consistent government funding - both training students and supporting companies. We could be way further along in biotech overall if there were actually a good number of us working on it. No sane investor is going to put money into R&D that will end up failing 9/10 times. And even if you hit on something, the healthcare system is so jacked, recouping your costs are just as hard as developing the product.

scythe 8y ago
A lot of people I know who worked in bio quit and went into tech, not because they couldn't get a job, but because they found bio research to be unbearably tedious. Perhaps the real market opportunity is in facilitating this kind of research, rather than just digging another mine.
- killjoywashere 8y ago
  Oh it is, it soooo is.
sneak 8y ago
> No sane investor is going to put money into R&D that will end up failing 9/10 times. Do you know what website you are on? It’s closer to 9.5, I think.
- ItsMe000001 8y ago
  But they invest in businesses that each have a plan that you know has a chance to work. Big difference between investing into the completely unknown. Besides, his 9/10 is way too optimistic. For basic research it is more like zero chance of profit because - it's just basic research to understand the problem and play around. More like particle research using expensive accelerators, not research on how can we use lasers to accomplish xyz (now that we already have them and know their physics exactly). Investors that invested into yet another Linux startup in the dot com boom had a high chance of failure - but those business all tried to be RedHat, not something completely unknown. And the subject of the business was an operating system, not something unknown. Your bet is on execution and the market, not on some yet unknown product.

toomanybeersies 8y ago

Related to this is addiction treatment, which in the USA is unregulated. Many treatment centers don't actually follow scientifically sound methods for treatment and are little more than an expensive summer camp for adults. John Oliver did a segment on the situation a couple of months ago, it's worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWQiXv0sn9Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWQiXv0sn9Y This kind of misleading advertising for privatized healthcare sickens me. It happens for all kinds of healthcare, individual anecdotes used as advertising for a treatment with a low chance or success, or for treatments with no proof of success at all. I saw it just today in the newspaper for a depression treatment service of some sort, which tried to disguise itself as a legitimate article, and essentially tried to guilt trip the reader into thinking that the best option for their friends and family who are at risk of suicide is to send them to this treatment facility.

DoreenMichele 8y ago
Given the role that social stuff plays in suicidal ideation, that's seriously disturbing.

DanielleMolloy 8y ago

Advertising prescription drugs to the general public is forbidden in the EU. Any over-the-counter mood-alternating substances, including sleeping pills must not be advertised, too (speaking of Germany, not sure whether this applies everywhere). In TV ads you mostly see over-the-counter painkillers and meds against digestion problems like flatulences. I have never seen an ad for a clinic either. Similar rules exist worldwide: http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/87/8/09-040809/en/ http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/87/8/09-040809/en/ The US and New Zealand seem to be the only countries allowing this kind of marketing. I find medicine or health-related ads from the US utterly disturbing. While such laws existed nationally since the beginning of the 20th century, the newer EU laws here were made specifically to prevent a situation like in the US (i.e. thanks for providing the useful bad example, guys).

nicktelford 8y ago
Not sure if it's EU-wide, but it's certainly the case in the UK too. Here, we predominantly see adverts for: basic over-the-counter painkillers, cold/flu "remedies" (winter) and hayfever/allergy remedies (summer). It's really quite jarring visiting the US and watching TV there. Not only because of the seriousness of the drugs they advertise, but also the sheer volume of pharmaceutical ads. I swear it often felt like 50% of the ads were for prescription drugs. Really weird.
- isostatic 8y ago
  The U.S. spends 3 times as much per person on healthcare than the UK. Where do you think the money goes? Of course this gives "free" TV, that you pay for through more expensive medicine.
- lawn 8y ago
  Same in Sweden.
- Sharlin 8y ago
  As an aside, is the current prescription opioid epidemic in the US unique? I’ve certainly never heard of a nationwide drug problem stemming from legally prescribed drugs, as opposed to contraband ones. The closest thing I know is abuse of heroin replacement drugs, but the root cause in that is the heroin…

hasa 8y ago

TV-shop of medical treatments, LOL.

sconklin 8y ago

Not the only shady: https://www.argusleader.com/story/news/politics/2018/02/19/rounds-surrenders-18-500-illegal-campaign-contributions/352251002/ https://www.argusleader.com/story/news/politics/2018/02/19/r...

adamzk 8y ago

Dead people don't give testimonies.

YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago

>> "There is a special place in hell for for-profit companies who provide unrealistic or false messages to sick and vulnerable patients in an effort to cajole their business." That may just be pessimistic, anti-social, misanthropic old me, but what incentive do people have nowadays, in a capitalist, free-market society, to care about the health of strangers when they can maximise their profits by exploiting their illness?

milesokeefe 8y ago

Non-amp link: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemlee/cancer-treatment-center-misleading-ads https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemlee/cancer-tr...