It'll never not be fascinating how people think peddling advanced medicine directly to the consumer is a normal thing to do.
this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
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I seriously don’t get. I have never once gone to my doctor and asked for medicine I saw on tv.
I’m not trying to defend pharma ads, but: you probably don’t have a serious chronic illness.
If you had, say, rheumatoid arthritis, you would have probably tried a dozen different meds over the years in various combinations: Enbrel, Humira, methotrexate, etc. So if you saw a commercial for an RA medication that you know didn’t exist last year you’d take notice because this may be the one that finally lets you walk without pain again. You’re already scheduled to see your rheumatologist every 3 months because the medication you’re currently on is eroding your liver. Maybe you want to ask if this new med might be better.
Funny enough, you’re as wrong as you could possibly be. Could be I’m just lucky to have an amazing rheumatology team but it seems like they should have a minimum requirement of knowing how to treat.
You are indeed very lucky. It sounds like your illness is well managed. Congratulations. For many people, their chronic illness is a great deal harder than yours, though you may find it hard to put yourself in their shoes if you haven’t suffered. Not everybody has a team to advocate for them, but perhaps you can’t imagine what that’s like. I thought I could offer a window into the existence of someone less fortunate, but I can’t gift you with the empathy to look.
If you had empathy for them, you'd want that money going to making sure they have regular appointments with experts who are much more likely to know if it's something that is likely to help or if it's just another clone drug that marginally better for some people but really just designed to extend patents and charge an absurd premium rather than peddling that stuff as a serious hope for every person suffering from the disease just to let them down again.
If I need a doctor's perscription to get it anyway, it should be advertised to doctors only, not the general public. Awareness of the options available is their responsibility. Receiving a trained expert's diagnosis and their recommended treatment is the entire point of why I'm seeing a doctor in the first place.
If it's not a restricted pharma product, fine, I guess. I don't like ads for those either, but I can't come up with a compelling argument why a product I can get at the grocery store can't be publicly advertised, beyond my gut feeling that it's a mildly scummy practice.
Because $$$
What do you not understand?
In our country that kind of medication doesn't get ads.
Only stuff like aspirin, paracetamol and cough drops get to make ads.
In Canada we have usual ads for OTC drugs and vaccines, but for prescriptions it's weird.
You're allowed to advertise that a drug exists for Condition X, but can't say what that drug is, OR that there is a drug out there called Drug Y, but can't say what it does or what it's for, and you're not allowed to combine the two. So we get the most inane ads out there where every single one is just a bunch of stock photo looking people doing stock photo things, talking about how they asked their doctor about drug Y.
Yeah, that would be all civilised countries.
The worst I've seen is "may cause a fatal infection of the skin of the perineum."
Toxic epidermal necrolysis is another fun one. Basically, your skin dies and you can pull it off like a glove.
A lot of the time this happens because the illness that the medication is intended to treat is also prevalent in the people who are being treated with said medicine. For example, most antidepressants come with a increased risk in suicide, but that's primarily (although not entirely in most cases) because a depressed person is more likely to be taking a depression medicine and also more likely to commit suicide.
[more you know star GIF I'm to lazy to google, but apparently not too lazy to type all this out, which is arguably more work}
In case of the increased suicide risk, there is also the fact the first effect of the medication felt is increase of energy, so the person might be more likely to actually act on their suicidal thoughts.
Exactly. And a non suicidal person would like, I don’t know, clean their house or something.
Medicine A: lowers risk of heart issues but could cause liver issues, we recommend you also take Medicine B.
Medicine B: Lowers chances of liver issues, may increase heart issues.
The type of medicine described in the meme usually is this way because it is helpful at preventing heart attacks (or stroke) while taking it, but if you suddenly stop taking it then you are worse off than before. Tapering off a medication like this can be done with professional medical supervision. The warning is necessary so people know not to suddenly stop without talking to their doctor.
...or we could maybe not allow showing ads to people for drugs with significant side effects like other countries
Do not use ________ if you are allergic to _________
That's because you got a bad roll.