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Can someone explain why advertisements for prescription medication should be banned? Perhaps I'm missing something but I don't see anything egregiously wrong wi

by xtreme 7y ago

Can someone explain why advertisements for prescription medication should be banned? Perhaps I'm missing something but I don't see anything egregiously wrong with it.

jniedrauer 7y ago
The purpose of advertisement is to increase sales for a given product. Consumers are not qualified to decide what prescription drugs they need and can easily be tricked. Doctors are the only people qualified to make those decisions. And the advertisements are not targeted at doctors. If an advertisement convinces someone to take a drug that they don't need, the best case outcome is that a company is enriched at someone's monetary expense. The worst case is that there are adverse side effects, impacting the user's health for no reason. So in this case, a company is profiting by poisoning someone and eroding the stability of society. It's not many steps removed from selling radium water.
- fromthestart 7y ago
  >. Consumers are not qualified to decide what prescription drugs they need and can easily be tricked. >It's not many steps removed from selling radium water. Except you've glossed over the critical extra step: you still need a prescription from your doctor, who presumably considers whether the drug a patient is requesting is appropriate. Also consider your doctor is not aware of all of your problems and all available drugs, nor is the average patient aware of what conditions are treatable. For example, medications like chantix for smoking cessation may be brought up by patients without doctors necessarily aware of smoking habits. I don't like ads, but I'm not convinced that ads for drugs are too much more evil than others.
  - kossae 7y ago
    > who presumably considers whether the drug a patient is requesting is appropriate. Sure.. presumably, but let's not forget about drug reps. You know, those salesmen from the prescription companies (who run the ads) who "advertise" to doctors with fancy vacations and other perks. I've heard plenty of stories where a doctor prescribed something he/she knowingly wasn't supposed to (or there was a better alternative available), but had an "in" with the drug representatives allowing for perks they just weren't willing to give up.
puranjay 7y ago
You're being advertised a product that can cause irreparable harm to your health, even though you're not remotely equipped to understand how the product works, or if it even works at all.

by xtreme 7y ago

Can someone explain why advertisements for prescription medication should be banned? Perhaps I'm missing something but I don't see anything egregiously wrong with it.

jniedrauer 7y ago

The purpose of advertisement is to increase sales for a given product. Consumers are not qualified to decide what prescription drugs they need and can easily be tricked. Doctors are the only people qualified to make those decisions. And the advertisements are not targeted at doctors. If an advertisement convinces someone to take a drug that they don't need, the best case outcome is that a company is enriched at someone's monetary expense. The worst case is that there are adverse side effects, impacting the user's health for no reason. So in this case, a company is profiting by poisoning someone and eroding the stability of society. It's not many steps removed from selling radium water.

fromthestart 7y ago
>. Consumers are not qualified to decide what prescription drugs they need and can easily be tricked. >It's not many steps removed from selling radium water. Except you've glossed over the critical extra step: you still need a prescription from your doctor, who presumably considers whether the drug a patient is requesting is appropriate. Also consider your doctor is not aware of all of your problems and all available drugs, nor is the average patient aware of what conditions are treatable. For example, medications like chantix for smoking cessation may be brought up by patients without doctors necessarily aware of smoking habits. I don't like ads, but I'm not convinced that ads for drugs are too much more evil than others.
- kossae 7y ago
  > who presumably considers whether the drug a patient is requesting is appropriate. Sure.. presumably, but let's not forget about drug reps. You know, those salesmen from the prescription companies (who run the ads) who "advertise" to doctors with fancy vacations and other perks. I've heard plenty of stories where a doctor prescribed something he/she knowingly wasn't supposed to (or there was a better alternative available), but had an "in" with the drug representatives allowing for perks they just weren't willing to give up.

puranjay 7y ago

You're being advertised a product that can cause irreparable harm to your health, even though you're not remotely equipped to understand how the product works, or if it even works at all.