Hacker News Reader

Comment by autoexec | Hacker News Reader

> Seems like a wonder drug to me. The benefits just keep piling up.

That's a massive red flag. It's a common sign of snake oil when something claims to be the cure for a ton of completely unrelated conditions. While I do think these drugs are actually effective at some things, I also wonder how much they're being overprescribed already. It seems like there's a massive push to try to get insurance to cover the drug for just about anything and everything. I've never seen a drug advertised as aggressively either.

The drug is helping people and improving lives and that's a good thing, but I'm not sure how much of the attention on this drug is just a massive scheme by phrama companies to get sales and how careful doctors and patients are being.

View on HN

> It's a common sign of snake oil when something claims to be the cure for a ton of completely unrelated conditions.

Except this is coming from the opposite direction. The drug is being noticed to seemingly cure unrelated conditions. The vendor is not selling it as that.

There's always the chance that the manufacturers are behind some of these stories -- funding studies to find new markets, astroturfing success stories, etc.

Although I can't say it's what happened in this case, I suspect that the drug companies have a hand in some of the research showing the unexpected benefits of their product. While they do have to be careful about what they claim the drug does in conventional advertising, studies suggesting various benefits for this drug get a lot of attention in the media.

These studies have conflict of interest, funding, etc. disclosures.

If it was Lilly and Novo pushing these, they'd either show up in those disclosures or you're suggesting a massive conspiracy to undermine the medical regulatory system to sell more drugs that they already have struggled to meet demand for for extended periods of time.

Why would they kill a golden goose that shows no signs of stopping it's egg laying?

It's not so much a massive conspiracy as it is the known reality of how these companies operate. There is very little risk as oversight and real accountability are basically non-existent

Novo Nordisk has even demonstrated their willingness to ignore disclosure requirements (https://www.pslhub.org/blogs/entry/7950-wegovy-maker-novo-no...) multiple times even (https://news.sky.com/story/ozempic-maker-novo-nordisk-failed...) but the problem is everywhere including research

Here are just some examples:

> Cross-sectional studies across a heterogeneous set of conditions suggest that between 29 and 69 % of published clinical trial reports include disclosures of conflicts of interest. Studies measuring undisclosed conflicts of interest suggest that between 43 and 69 % of study reports and other articles fail to include disclosures of conflicts of interest (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4854425/)

> chief medical officer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, failed to disclose relevant industry ties in dozens of research articles since 2013. (https://ashpublications.org/ashclinicalnews/news/4092/Leadin...)

> one in four Australian authors in 120 trials had at least one undeclared conflict, with an average value of undisclosed payment at almost AU $9000. (https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2022/03/14/many-...)

I noticed that just in the past two hours you have provided detailed skepticism/commentary in these topics:

- Semaglutide

- App addiction for kids

- Fake news via tiktok

I guess what I'm asking is: are you really going deep, or just blasting us with links?

I only provided examples in case there was any doubt that failure to disclose ties to the pharmaceutical industry was a known and large scale problem after the suggestion that it was some kind of conspiracy theory. Skepticism in the case of these drug companies is warranted.

As for the variety of the things I've commented on, I can only blame procrastination and the contents of the front page. I got a lot more work done monday afternoon, I promise.

There's no case to be made for calling these drugs snake oil. They're well-proven to have a host of benefits beyond their specified use. Their promotion by the makers of the drug doesn't change that.

Thanks. I'll admit I'm pretty surprised - my understanding is this sort of thing usually is a much bigger deal when it comes to fucking with things that impact FDA decisions, etc., so them publicly flouting it is pretty crazy to me.

"unrelated"

Are they, or is it just our incomplete understanding?

We still keep finding new and new surprising relationships in our bodies. Caries bacteria in colorectal cancer. Schizophrenia cured by bone marrow transplant. ALS cases induced by consumption of mushrooms (false morels).

I wouldn't be surprised if, say, reduction of systemic inflammation caused all sorts of unexpected effects body-wide.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com