to prescribe what they are hawking. I work within the medical industry and it is as capitalist as any business out there.

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It's got to be 10 years later, so Big PhRMA can make their money to stave off the settlements and still profit.

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I don't know if that's an actual phrase but the purpose of these ads is for people to request them. If the Doctor doesn't comply ....go to another doctor.

At first these ads couldn't tell you WHAT it did. Big Pharma was able to negotiate changing that but had list possible side effects.

These ads were a big topic of John Edwards in his run. He knew what they would lead to.

Pharma commercials should be banned like tobacco ads. This is one reason these assholes spend something close to 50% of their money on marketing.

Oh, and I think Bugs Bunny always took a left at Albuquerque.

Our doctors went to medical school...us patients did not.

I've walked out of a doctor's office when he told me there was nothing that could be done for my knee to make it better. When I went to another doctor for the same knee, I went armed with information about my potential options and his explanation matched what I had learned.

I would never go to a doctor and put my health entirely in their hands.

Last edited Tue Jun 12, 2018, 11:19 AM - Edit history (1)

to do a great deal for patients with persistent joint pain (or any debilitating chronic illness, for that matter), only to have the patient refuse to comply with the treatment plan.

I can't count how many patients I've had in my clinic following up on a recent emergency room visit for, say, knee pain, only to have them tell me "They didn't do anything for me!"

Then I'll read the ED reports and find out that the emergency room provider did actually do quite a bit to get started treating the underlying problem with the joint; a referral for physical therapy or a surgical consult, for example. Then it turns out that all the patient wanted was a prescription for their favorite opioid medication, Percocet, or what have you.

Without question, there are lazy, incompetent, and negligent medical providers out there. But the vast majority of them want to help their patients and fix what's ailing them. But these pharmaceutical commercials create the impression that any medical problem can be solved easily just by popping a pill. That's rarely the case in real life.

This is exactly why pharmaceutical companies spend a fortune advertising to them.

In the 90's he would visit MD's and medical practices and push his new drugs on the doctors, giving them samples to hand out to patients and brochures etc. Then his firm would also send MD's to expensive, "All expenses paid" golf outings at which they would pitch the doctors and give them slide shows and slick video presentations to push their Pharma brand.

I'm not certain of the year, but sometime in the late 90's Congress banned these type of Pharma sales and paid outings, that's when big pharma decided to go to television marketing of "boutique " drugs; new drugs that doctors may not know to prescribe, and cut out the middle man...the MD.

Doctors I know HATE this... patients are constantly bugging them about name prescription drugs for problems they don't have, but are convinced that they do... by television advertising.They are also faced with desperate patients clamoring for cancer drugs they have seen on TV, but are not qualified to receive, because the adverts do not tell you that they are "end stage" drugs, and they cost a FORTUNE.
I know someone who receives nivolumab immunotherapy @ $12,000. per treatment.

In 2012, the pharmaceutical industry spent more than $27 billion on drug promotion1— more than $24 billion on marketing to physicians and over $3 billion on advertising to consumers (mainly through television commercials).2 This approach is designed to promote drug companies' products by influencing doctors' prescribing practices.3

http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/fact-sheets/2013/11/11/persuading-the-prescribers-pharmaceutical-industry-marketing-and-its-influence-on-physicians-and-patients

Not so great for doctors and patients.

a lot of people don't go to the doctor when they should, because exactly that, they don't think there's a cure. so advertising *can* serve a legitimate public interest by informing people of a treatment available, especially if it's a relatively new treatment that not everyone is already aware of.

of course, pharmaceutical companies take this narrow justification and then turn it into someone more manipulative, encouraging patients to think they know better and to demand something from their doctor that may not be appropriate for their situation.

Doc: Luckycharms, even though this drug was approved by the FDA, I must warn you that one of the side effects is a 30% chance of an explosive rectal prolapse while walking in public.

Me: That's ok.

I have taken two that is currently on the TV ads you see alot. One was Trulicity (once a week) and I had terrible side effects. Burped a lot with bad sulfur like taste, painful stomach and farted a lot. Hated it. Doc switched to Victoza which I am taking now. No side effect. All i did was cut the sugar by 90% and eat smaller portion. I can say my glucose is doing a lot better than it has in years.

But i watch thise drug ads but i also watch for those who the lawyers go after.

But yeah they spend too much on marketing instead of lowering the god damn drug prices. They are insanely expensive!

this madness to continue. Then I think about the listed side effects and know we won't ever take one of them.
Then I laugh watching the same media take ads from the lawyers who will sue these pharma companies for relatives after folks die from the side effects. No where else on the planet allows this shit.

Seem like money that can be better used to lower drug prices.

suicide ideation shifts my first impression

a blood pressure medication that had possible suicide as a side effect for some, which I found out later. I got that side effect and I cannot describe how oppressive that feeling is. It is like existing in a state of nothingness - absolute nothingness. Frankly, suicide seemed like the most positive thing I could do. Thank goodness I found one of those pharmaceutical reference books. I also learned it would take 3 months for the drug to leave my system.

If this is what happened to Bourdain I now completely understand. The family should sue.

I don't recall when the govt made them disclose this info but I am glad they have to do it.

If you look at the fine print that comes with any prescription it is about 4 pages long. The negative side effects really vary greatly from one person to the next. The Moron took meds for a prostate which had side effects of making a person's hair grow so that is why he took it (and hired his goons to ransack his ex-doctor's office for his personal files).

As far as Tony goes, he stopped smoking after his daughter was born since his wife made him go outside and he had to climb a lot of stairs and after smoking 3 packs a day that was not easy. He also wanted to have a healthier life as a responsible parent. He started smoking again after he hooked up with Asia who smokes like a fiend. Too bad he didn't avoid her...seems like she was more of a detriment to his health than smoking ever was.

ALS

Is a major factor in the high cost of drugs.
The fact is, they spend more on advertising than they do on R&D.
There is no logical reason why they are allowed to do that. There is no benefit to the consumer, but a lot of cost.

believed capitalist enterprises could be regulated.

Bill Clinton’s FDA Opened the Floodgates to Big Pharma’s Pill Pushing
“In the beginning, this despicable epidemic had a less violent delivery system. Our kids were delivered and a lot of our adults were delivered into a paralyzing addiction by doctors, pharmacists and drug manufacturers, not by armed gangs,” explained Mr. Clinton to the mayors.

In 1983, Big Pharma aired its first direct-to-consumer television advertisement for a prescription drug in the US. To this day, only the US and New Zealand allow Big Pharma to push drugs directly to the user.

By 1985, the FDA had set stringent rules regarding the Big Pharma ads. Primarily, they couldn’t express that a specific drug could treat a specific claim. This mostly kept Big Pharma’s TV drug pushers at bay.

That all changed in 1996, in Bill Clinton’s first term. That’s when Big Pharma figured out the “ask your doctor” loophole – advertising a medicine without saying what it is or what it does.

1996 is also the year Purdue Pharmaceuticals starts marketing OxyContin as being an abuse-and-addiction-resistant opioid that could be taken safely more often than the recommended twice-per-day maximum.

In 1997, at the start of Bill Clinton’s second term, his FDA relaxed its rules to allow specific-drug-for-specific-ailment claims.

Clinton’s oversight of the industry was so lax that Purdue was promoting OxyContin on giveaway swag like beach hats, coffee mugs, and fanny packs, a marketing scheme that didn’t cease until Purdue was fined over it in 2007 following consumer lawsuits." -snip

Pharmaceutical commercials are allowed in the US ?

Here, advertising for prescription drugs is totally prohibited to the public. It is done only for physicians and very strictly supervised.

For very obvious reasons : a non-professional has absolutely no competence to judge a drug in the context of a treatment.

It remains possible for non-prescription medicines, but it is subject to such rules and authorizations that it is very rare.

There is no way of playing on words or using tricks to convince. So it's less interesting for a lab.

The idea of drug advertising gives me goose bumps. To me, it's almost criminal.

But i would say i see as many commercials for those as for cars. They are on constantly, particularly the more recent ads for a treatment for plaque psoriasis. There are 4 different versions of that same ad and i honestly believe i see those ads 10 times a day.

The ads for Chantix (smoking cessation) are also on an awful lot.

And lots of ads for depression or depression adjuvants.

Unlike where you live, these are not only allowed, they're ubiquitous.

$$$$$

And other networks, too.

Say, 20 years ago or more, imagine being told that on the evening news every night, you'd be seeing long ads for products that you can't buy directly, that have a list of warnings and drawbacks that take up more than half the run time of the ad, and that product serves a very small and well-defined segment of the viewing audience. This is prime advertising real estate, and the advertisers are throwing gobs of money out there for this.

You'd wonder if society had gone barking mad or if the advertisers had. And you'd be right.

Move to any other country on the planet... They're only legal in the US.

diagnose 99% of what might be wrong with them, much less treat it. What happened to the good old days when pharma reps clogged waiting rooms? I can't imagine walking into the doctor's office and telling her what to prescribe for the condition the television says I have. My immediate reaction to big pharma is to avoid all medications unless absolutely, positively necessary for a halfway decent life.

As soon as they started advertising directly to me (and not my doctor). What.the heck do I know?! Then I figured it out after I was dazzled by a commercial for a sleep aid and then went in to my Dr and asked for thst same medication ! Luckily he didn't like that medication and it has killed people since then. We are not patients to them, we're just numbers to them.