I defend the pharmaceutical companies a lot here, and with good reason; they produce lifesaving drugs. More please! Nonetheless, one criticism I don't see made enough is that pharmaceutical companies don't seem to realize that they can't sell pills the way you sell detergent. For starters, the things do have side effects that could kill people, so you shouldn't try to persuade people to take drugs they don't need. But from a purely selfish perspective, any company that is seen to be mixing the profit motive too closely with our health care will eventually get sentenced to death by the court of public opinion. Derek Lowe has more:
I agree that Merck is still doing some excellent science, as they always have. And they still have a lot of good people there, as they always have. Those aren’t the problems. And they’re still introducing some innovative drugs, arguably more than a lot of other companies, and that’s not the problem, either. These are all are admirable things.
And Vioxx, as I said here at the time, was not, in my opinion, necessarily a bad drug. It and the other COX-2 inhibitors have a real place in the pharmacopeia. The problem is that Merck – or, to put the usual face-saving perspective on it, Merck’s marketing department – oversold the stuff. The prospect of an aspirin-sized market was too much for them to resist, so the company pushed Vioxx just about as hard as they possibly could.
Yep, Vioxx was for all kinds of patients, all kinds of pain, all the time – and under those conditions, whatever side effects were there were finally revealed. It’s the company’s bad luck (not to mention the bad luck of their patients) that those effects were as potentially severe as they were. Even so, the increased risk of a heart attack with Vioxx use is extremely small in any absolute sense. For people with severe pain who can’t get relief with other drugs, I think a COX-2 inhibitor is absolutely worth it.
Seems like an appropriate occasion to ask a couple of questions that have been on my mind for years now:
1. Didn't it used to be against the law to market prescription drugs directly to consumers? When did that change? What is the argument for it?
2. Didn't it used to be against the law to give drugs names suggestive of the conditions they were intended to treat? Evidently not the case now, as witness "Boniva" for osteoporosis and "Flomax" for urinary restriction caused by swollen prostate? Why is that a good idea?
Well, sure -- and they also tend to recommend you buy and use drugs so much that it influences treatment. You see that for example in IgE testing for allergies -- doesn't catch on in part because the drug companies push drugs to pharmacists who push them to docs who just assume everything is an allergy. Restraint in the use of drugs, across the board, is probably a good idea and one that pharmas understandably want to discourage.
"For starters, the things do have side effects that could kill people, so you shouldn't try to persuade people to take drugs they don't need."
The pharma companies aren't doing that with prescription drugs; instead, they are encouraging people to see their physicians and ask them if drug x is appropriate for them. To the extent that this may get patients to seek treatment for conditions sooner rather than later, it's a benefit for all concerned.
You still need a prescription to get prescription drugs legally. The advertisements encourage people to see their doctors to get the prescriptions. Is this a net benefit or not? I don't know, but I don't see evidence that it is necessarily a net negative either- even in the case of Vioxx, whose story is more complicated than is generally known.
50,000 a year die in automobile accidents in the US, many of them first time car buyers. I am not sure I understand the distinction between pharmaceutical companies and their advertising and that of Ford and GM.
The pharma industry is less interested in making lifesaving drugs, than life enhancing drugs like Viagra, associated pain killers, etc. The trick is to get the patient hooked (just like certain banner recreational type drugs) and keep coming back for more. It is all about generating predictable cash flows.
And I don't blame them. Any company competing in the fickle world of quarterly earnings and analyst expectations needs to keep the cash and profits rolling. All the more so given the large R&D costs in the health care area. Health care is ultimately a social good, and our failures in that sector are primarily due to the government’s absolute lack of interest in making this social good available to those to need it (verses those who can afford it).
Yancey Ward wrote: I am not sure I understand the distinction between pharmaceutical companies and their advertising and that of Ford and GM.
Whaaaa...?!
They're encouraging the consumption of products explicitly designed to alter human chemistry and physiology while having a potentially wide range of short-term and long-term side effects, and further carrying the potential to cause severe but non-obvious harm if misused.
When and how their advertising can be regulated is certainly a legitimate debate point but cars, these are not.
Rum Raisin wrote: The pharma industry is less interested in making lifesaving drugs, than life enhancing drugs like Viagra, associated pain killers, etc. The trick is to get the patient hooked (just like certain banner recreational type drugs) and keep coming back for more. It is all about generating predictable cash flows.
I keep hearing variations of this argument, and they sound more like an infantile simplification every time. There are grains of truth in it, but rather than recognize that the human body is an extraordinarily complex system and the governing chemistry has unique quirks right down to the individual level, all of the truths are completely distorted by a petulant belief that somebody, somewhere, is holding out on giving us the good life.
As for getting people "hooked" just like "banner recreational drugs"...what the crap? Question: If you were to continue appreciating a good show in your later years, but your little friend refused to give a standing ovation, how much would you pay for just one night of the good old days? And if somebody invented a product that would enable normalacy repeatedly, would you stop at one night?
Anony-mouse,
I understand the products are not the same, or acquired in the same way (you need a prescription to get a prescription pharmaceutical). I don't understand the justifications for restricting advertising on one but not the other. One of the justifications that is put forward is that drugs can hurt and kill when misused, but so do a lot of products, like autos, or a better example- alcohol.
I don't think alcoholic beverages are a good comparative defense here (tobacco products either, for that matter) because those are, in fact, heavily regulated.
Frankly, there aren't many consumer products that aren't dangerous in some fashion; it would be remarkably pretty easy to maim or kill yourself via an electric bread toaster or paper shredder, for example.
There, fixed that for you.
No charge.
Someone should "fix" you, bud :-/
If you've followed my posting for any length of time, you should know I am not one of the raving drug industry opponents around here. My statement was factually correct and relevant to the argument at hand.
Your reconstruction of it, while also correct, is propaganda in this context.
From "roac:"
I can't remember exactly when the airwaves were suddenly clogged w/ these adverts, but one must suspect that both the argument & "good idea" have something to do w/ industry pressure on the FDA, or its bosses farther up the gov't. food chain.
but one must suspect
Oh good, conspiracy theories! You're going to need a better villain than the FCC, though. These days they mostly seem to be concerned with keeping a 40yo woman's sagging bosom off the air while ignoring the Victoria's No-Longer-Secret ads, which doesn't leave much original material to work with.
The best quote I heard about Vioxx was a question of how come 12 randomly chosen people in Texas were allowed to overrule both the FDA experts (which did not order the drug off the market) and the thousands of patients and their doctors who were happy to accept and manage the side effects of Vioxx (which are, it must be said, much smaller than Aspirin or Tylenol).
Actually, advertising of alcohol is comparatively lightly regulated in some ways. No disclosure of nutritional analysis is required (unlike other foods and beverages), for instance.
Also, Tom, you never see this:
"Bacardi! Side effects may include vomiting, DUI, beer-goggling, and drunk-dialing."
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