>The idea of requiring list prices of drugs to be displayed in commercials
It's bizarre that prescription medication is advertised like that in the first place.
It's bizarre that prescription medication is advertised like that in the first place.
Getting China out of the hole it's in would be much harder than reversing the course on US politics, but only if US citizens stop fooling themselves into thinking they're in "the best country in the world".
[1] https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/meet-the-eco...
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.
>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.
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.
[1] http://theconversation.com/drug-ads-leave-canadians-in-the-d...
But not Oxycontin.
Does that make a difference when it comes to advertising? If I recall correctly it was like 2 or maybe 5 mg of codeine which is a very small amount. Any dose over that needed a prescription so I wouldn't be surprised if Tylenol was considered just an OTC drug but knowing there is codeine in it made me unsure.
As far as I know the rule for ads is 'non prescription', beyond that it's hard.
I don't recall seeing an ad for a prescription drug in Canada in the last decade, though they might exist in some form.
We get American TV and those ads seem quite ridiculous, what with the senior citizens dancing away, and the narrator iterating through a huge list of symptoms, then listing off 30 or 40 side effects as fast as he can, as if people are remotely capable of understanding.
My family works in the drug industry, I should say one thing that people don't want to hear: a lot of doctors are lazy. Just because they're doctors, does not mean that they keep up in any way with current issues, trends. The level of power they have, and the relative lack of ongoing certification is ridiculous. Once they get their ticket, it's a golden ride for the rest of their lives if they want.
Many people complain about the 'free lunch' doctor's visits by the sales reps, but I don't see it as such a bad thing. It's intense and important information, I have no problem with Doctors getting a 'free ham sandwich' to entice them to go through the data on the latest trials.
Obviously, there are shenanigans there, misrepresentation, competitive issues, pricing etc. etc. - but frankly a 'highly moral sales/communication force' actually I think does add value - they get doctors to pay attention to the specific issues. Obviously, there are probably better alternatives ... but again, Doctor's guilds are very powerful and archaic, nobody can tell them what to do.
I remember being shocked when I first moved there that you could get even a small amount of codeine over the counter. That would never fly in the US for precisely the reason you gave for them finally pulling it from the market - people here would buy the crap out of it to get "high" even though at those small doses you'd have to eat a LOT of them to feel a real effect. I can't imagine the stomach problems people would have taking that much of an analgesic.
Frankly (and maybe it's different in Canada), but I feel like people will have better health outcomes if they are aware of the options and consult, work with, and even challenge if need be, their GP.
GPs (or Primary Care Physicians, PCPs in the U.S.) share some goals with their patients, but many goals are not shared:
* Spending less money / good drug success / less side effects vs. using only tests/drugs they GP is comfortable with * Avoiding lawsuits vs. candid discussion * Taking time to research medical hypotheses vs. needing to get to the next patient
Come to think of it, if one is willing to invest the time, have an inquisitive mind, and demand a partnership relationship with most service providers, perhaps that person will generally have better outcomes in many areas (home repairs, dental, car service, etc.).
Lots of people suffer from hyperhidrosis, which is excessive sweating, generally on the palms, feet, or armpits, where sweat glands are clustered.
There have never been great treatments. There are all sorts of them, but many of them just don't work, or have horrific side effects.
Among these is a drug called glycopyrronium bromide, which is an anticholinergic. Taken orally, it absolutely cures hyperhidrosis dead in its tracks. It also has a tendency to dry up every part of your body that should naturally be lubricated in some way.
Imagine your mouth, tongue and throat so dry you can barely form the movements necessary to speak. Imagine your eyes so dry you can barely blink. Imagine your nose dry and cracking and frequently bleeding.
Lots of people would have talked to their physicians about this in the past, and lots of people would have tried options available to solve the problem, including surgical options. But all of those options were either terrible, or did little to alleviate the fundamental problem.
And then in 2018 there was a new treatment developed, qbrexza, essentially the same drug, but delivered as a topical cloth treatment. It turns out this drug is not readily absorbed into the surrounding bloodstream, and in any event doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier at all. It turns out that topical treatment works quite well for the primary purpose, with significantly reduced side effects.
But imagine you've already talked to your doctor about this problem, years ago, tried several remedies, and none of them worked. Imagine you had already given up on seeking treatment.
Then you see an advertisement on TV for your particular affliction. It sounds like a new, and promising avenue of treatment. And so you decide to go back to your doctor, and ask about this new treatment, which never existed before. And you never would have done that, probably ever, if you hadn't seen the advertisement.
How many drug advertisements do you see for old drugs? Not that many. There are some, for very common ailments like hypertension. But primarily drug advertisements are focused on new drugs.
It's not that odd to advertise a new treatment. There are still doctors that need to evaluate patients and prescribe the medication. If doctors are prescribing useless medication to patients, that seems like the primary problem to me, not the advertisements.
This should be your doctor's job when you go for annual checkups. If you don't go for annual checkups, you shouldn't be surprised that your health choices are falling out of date.
How would you know to ask the doctor about it during your annual check-up, if you aren't aware of the existence of the drug? As others have mentioned already, doctors do not tend to track every single new medication for every possible little condition that their patients could have. And even if they physically could do that (not sure if it is actually possible), do you think they would, just like every web developer would keep track of every new little framework/tool that gets released and could potentially serve their needs better?
As far as "they do not track" , they are supposed to. That's a failing on the doctor's part but putting the patients in charge based on paid TV advertisements for what is actually an extremely narrow portion of available drugs is not the solution.
I don't rely on business users asking me about technical solutions to their problems based on advertisements they've seen, and I'm not in a field with as much required specialized prerequisite and continuing education and mandated licensing as medicine.
Now, certainly there are patients that meaningfully contribute by, e.g., actually doing deep dives in the scientific literature related to their diagnosis and related treatments, and bringing questions and references derived from that research to their doctor, which really does cover things at a level that the average practitioner might not be aware of for a particular conditjo . But the kind of ads in popular media are of marginal if any value to them.
> As others have mentioned already, doctors do not tend to track every single new medication for every possible little condition that their patients could have.
They are bombarded with even more aggressive marketing than the public is for any of the ones that are spending money on public ads, so even if there is a real issue here, public-facing drug ads are not directed at solving it.
The Ad changed my life.