Why is restless leg syndrome always the poster child for people who hate pharma advertising? Both my fiance and I clearly have it, and you know what? It's really not very much fun not being able to sleep, nor are the cramp-like sensations that accompany the uncontrollable urge to kick your legs.
While we're at it, hooray for the commercials which informed me of the existence of Ambien CR, because I have the sort of insomnia that frequently wakes me up at 4 am. I had to browbeat a doctor--who said his patients were frequently groggy in the morning--into giving it to me. Well, apparently my liver chews through Ambien like my dog goes through three pounds of prime dry-aged steak, because I feel great the morning after I've taken it. I don't want to say Ambien CR is the best thing that ever happened to me. But it's in the top twenty, maybe the top ten.
If you've never had insomnia, it doesn't sound like a big problem. I know, because I, always a champion sleeper, developed insomnia in my thirties--in my twenties, I used to make fun of a coworker who couldn't sleep. But it turns out that not sleeping for weeks on end can really destroy your quality of life, which is why we're against doing it to prisoners at Guantanamo.
Here's something else that mystifies me: the progressive derision for Viagra. Here's a group of people who are opposed to abstinence-only education on the grounds that it is simply not possible, or for that matter worthwhile, to persuade teenagers to keep it in their pants. They go into convulsions every time a Catholic hospital refuses to dispense birth control, or pay for its employees to buy same. So why the fixation on Viagra? Sexual dysfunction may not be a disease, but it's still a problem. Considering how vital most progressives seem to think healthy sexual functioning is to people in their prime reproductive years, you'd think they'd be happy that we can now help more people participate in this vital sphere of human life. Instead, ED drugs are the poster children for Drugs Big Pharma Wasted A Ton of Money On Rather Than Developing Something Useful*.
Well, we don't need birth control either--we could just decide to be celibate--but I don't hear so much complaining about the commercials for Seasonale or the HPV vaccine.
I take the point that we're "medicalizing" normal parts of the human condition. But I'm not sure how useful that insight is. Disease and early death is a normal part of the human condition, and thank God we've medicalized it! I can live with a headache, so should I retire to a dark room rather than "medicalizing" my condition and taking an aspirin?
At the end of the day, whether or not these people have a medical condition, they still can't sleep or have sex. Given that most of us are very fond of both, I'm not sure why we're writing off drugs to treat those problems as ephemeral frippery.
* Actually, Viagra was a failed attempt to treat angina, which I think most of us recognize as a Certified Real Disease.
Copyright © 2010 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
When and where have progressives attacked Viagra? I spend part of every day scanning the progressive blogosphere and I can't think of an example.
Karl,
There are few comments sections on pharmaceutical companies, and the drugs they choose to invent and produce, that don't have at least one comment along the lines of "they should be developing useful things rather than drugs like Viagra", or, "why does health insurance pay for Viagra" etc.
Oh, I don't doubt that, but Megan specifically blamed progressives (and threw in digs at progressive attitudes toward birth control and sex ed to boot). What makes it seems as if progressives, in particular, are the people who are criticizing Viagra? I don't get that.
Because most people bashing "Big Pharma" do it from a leftist viewpoint.
To Alsadius below: Okay--so since you feel a majority of people who criticize Big Pharma are leftists, and since there are people who criticize Big Pharma who criticize Viagra, that demonstrates that progressives hate Viagra? (Or, as Megan says, have "a fixation" against Viagra?)
All I can say is that, after years of reading every progressive blog and columnist you can name, I can't think of a single post or column by any of them attacking Viagra. (And neither Megan nor any of the people commenting on this post cited or even mentioned one.) If progressives had "a fixation" about Viagra, I think there would be at least a few examples to prove it.
I spend a lot of time reading progressive (and other) blogs and sites too, and it's hard to think of what Megan is talking about, unless it's the beef I've heard a lot: that many insurance companies refuse to cover drugs relevant to women's reproductive health -- especially birth control pills, which are very expensive -- while covering Viagra because it's for men (and if you didn't cover it, men with power would revolt and get their companies to use a different insurer).
This is, frankly, a fair complaint. But it's about insurance companies, not drug companies, and fundamentally it's about sex discrimination -- you can bet that if men instead of women were the ones who took birth control pills, lots of insurance companies would start covering birth control immediately, just like they cover Viagra. Yet another reason why we need health insurance reform...
I'm with Karl here. This has never been a serious argument.
What is this post about anyway? The importance of health care and medicine? It's precisely because sleeping and having sex is so important to happiness that we all give a damn about the health care debate (compared to say the deficit).
I must live under a rock (yes, but it's a NICE rock).
Who is opposed to Viagra? Or Ambien CR? Or any of these other drugs?
I might dislike some of the commercials, but that's hardly a critique of the products, or a criticism of people who use/need them.
My progressive friends at least frequently deride drug companies for this reason and use it as an argument against more sensible government control of research. The argument usually is that academic companies spend their time making drugs to solve real problems while drug companies waste their time on Viagra and diet pills, so we don't need to worry about hurting profit incentives for drug companies.
This google blogs search of 'pharma "erectile disfunction"' (versus this one for 'pharma viagra') seems to indicate that Viagra isn't being knocked by name so much. But snide asides like
give the lie to the idea that no one feels negatively about certain drugs. Oh, I guess you can still say that no one attacks Viagra or Ambien. They're not bad or evil, or anything, just stupid and pointless. And a symbol of the awful wastefulness of our unfair health-care system. And a tool of the patriarchy.
Megan's in a race with Rush Limbaugh to see who can pop more pills.
Twitchy legs & insomnia both respond well to less alcohol & more exercise.
No offense, but I have obviously already had this discussion with my doctor. I don't drink at all most nights, even though I know it would be good for me, and I just opened a gym membership. Ditto Peter, except he was already going to the gym. It does make it better, but it doesn't fix the problem.
Yes, Megan, you said you browbeat a doctor into giving you drugs she considered unnecessary.
This is at least your 3rd post about your medical history featuring you obtaining medicine that didn't seem to be necessary.
If there was a proper system in place for medical records, one of the main benefits would be to limit overprescribing.
You know, unless someone is an addict and menace to society I don't think that there is such a thing as 'overproscribing.' I believe this for the same reason that I'm pro-choice but anti-abortion. People have more right to control their body than the government or a group of doctors do.
Hey what's the harm?
(Other than 7000 deaths a year due to prescription errors, massive expense, drug resistant bacteria & uncounted thousands of non-fatal adverse reactions, of course)
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1885128,00.html
Actually, she said she browbeat a doctor into giving her drugs whose side-effects the doctor considered not worthwhile. Which isn't the same thing at all.
Shirley, you can't be serious? If the doctor considered it necessary,he would have advised about potential side effects & recommended something. ((If A then B) & notB) => notA
Hey, we're all thrilled that you have a doctor whose recommendations for your many conditions are flawless and beyond question, but some of us like to have a dialog. It is supposed to be (and usually works best as) a consultation between adults, whereby the expertise of one is measured against the experience of the other, not subordiation to a comamnding officer.
The beautiful thing about zolpidem is that it is a simple (but powerful) hypnotic, not a barbiturate or a narcotic, and is therefore effective for its intended use while being relatively benign in its duration and aftereffects. Given that MM's doc probably doesn't want to blatantly open himself up for a malpractice suit, and given that MM probably doesn't want to open herself to federal drug charges by publishing her illicit exploits on the website of a widely read periodical, I think we can safely assume that both her and the doc acted in good faith on this one. And by "we", I mean reasonable people; you are quite free to crotchet your way to fortune and glory.
And don't call me surely.
Downpuppy, can you explain to me how sleeping pills lead to drug resistant bacteria?
Of course, Downpuppy, I'm sure your doctor never holds off on prescribing medication for other reasons such as running afoul of the DEA. The treatment of chronic pain conditions in this country is little short of criminal, because we're so terrified of enabling drug addicts that we'd prefer to leave people in legitimate pain.
Megan - any chance that your sciatic nerve is involved?
I have restless leg syndrome (RLS) and insomnia as well. I don't drink at all and am in pretty good shape. I didn't even know RLS had a name until a girlfriend did some googling, I just knew it was excruciating to be in places (like busses and airplanes) where I couldn't stretch my legs.
The comment to a Patterico post about this same condition summed it up brilliantly: "Diseases I or a family member have are real. Diseases nobody I know has are bupkis."
Weightlifters who do go to the gymn often still get that sort of "running legs" at night. Typically upping the iron in the diet helps. Dunno if that is a solution to your issue.
I agree that an hour of vigorous exercise a day solves many a problem people otherwise medicate. We were evolved to move about frequently. Not doing that takes practice, and a takes a toll.
Speaking as someone who recently experienced insomnia and temporarily used zolpidem (generic Ambien) to recover but hasn't slept as well or as deeply in the months since, you best hope the gods of poetic justice aren't listening and preparing a fitting end for you.
Chronic sleep deprivation is utterly debilitating -- there's no complete way to describe it unless you've experienced it, except possibly to say that it's a lot like experiencing jet lag that doesn't go away, while being unable to focus or enjoy tasks at hand, being easily spazzed out by even mildly stressful events, and feeling periodic internal fluctuations that are not dissimilar to coming down with a flu. So you do the logical thing and go to bed, and your body refuses to sleep. You want to; you need to; it won't.
A person starts to freak out after a week or two of that, because the body isn't able to reset its normal maintenance hormones and the ability to cope with ordinary activities and events is lost. To refer back to recent events, Michael Jackson was willing to risk killing himself just to get one good night's sleep. Heath Ledger's prescription drug cocktail wasn't as extreme but he met the same end for apparently similar reasons.
Increased exercise, reduced alcohol and caffeine intake: All fine ideas, except that most people who have been there, have tried them and found them, at best, only moderately helpful. The disruption to one's ordinary schedule and routine, and the boost in metabolism, can actually have just as many perverse effects as beneficial ones when you're trying to convince your body to relax.
That's your symptoms, not hers. "Frequently wakes me up at 4 am" isn't debilitating insomnia, it's normal for getting older. Been there, do that.
If I'm so tired that I find it hard to work, who cares whether it's "normal" or "medical"?
Downpuppy apparently.
"Frequently wakes me up at 4 am" isn't debilitating insomnia, it's normal for getting older. Been there, do that.
Megan is "in her thirties", not "born in the thirties". She isn't old yet.
Increased cardio will induce insomnia. So increased exercise can make the problem worse if it's the wrong sort.
But your other points about chronic insomnia are valid.
I couldn't agree more. I've heard many a person complain about the commercials, but few that complain about the product itself. I think maybe what Megan is getting at is what I would call the Super Bowl Ad sentiment. I frequently hear people say/think that drug companies are reaping monopolist-type/silly profits if they can afford to put their ads on the Super Bowl. Clearly these ads have been displacing some of the other suspects, so people might be skeptical. Again, I think the problem is with the ads not the product.
Now, all this said about why I think this is a straw man argument, I'll tell you my personal issue with Viagra. I think it is way too easy to get if you don't have an actual 'issue.' It is also gotten through non-prescription channels. Meanwhile, my wife has to constantly get exams/prescriptions for legitimate birth control because her seemingly great health plan creates all sorts of road blocks. So yes, I think it is completely insane that it is easier for me to get a 4-hour boner than it is for me to practice responsible family planning.
Your wife could just get the prescription and buy it herself. Why does so called "health" insurance cover prescriptions for either birth control drugs or make your williger stand at attention drugs? Neither is going to save your life.
Then people complain about the horrible cost of insurance from the "greedy" insurance companies that have to lay out their money to pay for this stuff.
Ed, I'm not complaining about the cost. I'm complaining about the bureaucratic hoops and I don't care whether it is government or insurance company induced. And yes, I'm making a normative decision about which drugs I value, but please don't make this an issue about which drug is going to save your life. There are tons of drugs--both prescription or non-prescription--that have dubious life saving abilites.
If you were paying for it yourself there would be NO bureaucratic hoops.
If you were paying for it yourself there would be NO bureaucratic hoops.
Oral contraceptives are, to the best of my knowledge, not available OTC. The government puts in bureaucratic hoops.
Ed,
Sure. My wife could also shop for an insurance plan that has better policies, but I guarantee her current insurance company is making a terrible decision. My wife has never taken a sick day in the 3-years she has had the plan and is clearly a profitable insured. How much does she cost with doctors appointments for pregnancy? How much if we have a sick kid? I'll guarantee the amount is more per month than the drug subsidy she receives.
Brandon Berg: What silliness are you babbling about. Got to doctor, and PAY the doc since your not sick, and get prescription for birth control pills . Go to drug store and fill prescription and the PAY for it.
The only time bureaucracy enters into it is when you expect SOMEBODY ELSE to pay for drugs so you can get laid.
(replying to ed @1:20 here as comments only nest finitely)
I call shenanigans. Prostrating oneself to an agent of a government-granted monopoly cartel to get service counts as jumping through bureaucratic hoops.
Apparently since those hoops are merely monetary in nature they don't count
I assume, Chappy, that you are complaining about the fact that your wife probably has to make appointments to see her OB and have regular gyn exams to receive prescriptions for birth control pills, and is probably kept on a relatively "short leash." (Like, no refill without coming in for an appt type leash.) That's not a bureaucratic short leash, that's a "As the doctor I don't want to get sued for prescribing birth control pills" short leash. Different kinds of birth control pills have different side effects (like increasing the risk of potentially fatal blood clots in smokers) so docs have to be careful when and how they are prescribed. Also women are supposed to get annual Pap smears and often the only way to ensure they show up annually is to refuse to prescribe the birth control pill until they come in for the exam. As a patient, I find this "short leash" infuriating. As a doctor, I enforce it. Depends on which side of the fence you're sitting on.
Most doctors use the birth control pill as a way to make sure women get a regular pap test. You can't just go into your doctor and have the prescription filled unless you have been examined the last year or two years, or whatever period that medical centre considers acceptable.
Sure. I think this explanation is reasonable and possibly good health care, but do doctors do the same thing for other drugs? For example, do doctors require men to get prostate exams if they continue to get a prescription for Viagra? Would Megan's doctor require her to get blood work on her liver before she gets another year of RLS drugs? I'm not a doctor so I'm just asking. It seems to me like this is a double standard. I could be wrong but I'm guessing that if my wife took up smoking or started misusing her prescription she be at far greater risk.
Another way of looking at that is that the doctors use the request for birth control to run up their bill - whether the customer (patient) wants it or not.
Oh, sorry, just read these comments.
chappy, the answer is yes, doctors do similar things for other drugs. Like for kids on ritalin I would stop refills if they missed too many follow-ups (blood pressure needs to be monitored regularly). Tricky cases are things like asthma meds--the kids really do need to come back for follow-up, but one can't really not refill a life-saving medicine like an albuterol inhaler.
Ed, that is positively insulting. Doctors do not use requests for prescriptions to "run up their bills." My god, don't you think we're already swamped with trying to see as many patients as want to see us? No, no, no. The reasons prescriptions are withheld are two:
1. Medicine causes potentially harmful side effect that must must must be monitored. Physician may face lawsuit if side effect happens. Physician would be irresponsible to continue to prescribe medicine in absence of documentation that it is safe to do so.
2. Patient requires follow-up or annual testing for good health maintenance (annual pap smear is an example.) Patient is usually in good health and doesn't want to see doctor. Only way to get patient through door is to withhold something patient wants, like a prescription medicine. We can discuss whether or not this paternalistic function should be a feature of the doctor-patient relationship, but currently physicians are supposed to follow standard guidelines and ensure patient compliance with stated standard guidelines (like annual pap smears).
Australia is the opposite. A workmate who needs warfarin and Viagra for his heart condition (it is still used for the original purpose) is paying $16/month for the warfarin and $8/day for the viagra. Because politically the Australian government is not able to subsidize viagra, even for it's legitimate use. It just results in too many humorous headlines.
@Karl and Rob: I don't think there's any official left-wing policy against quality-of-life drugs, but every time there's a healthcare post and the topic of alledged drug company waste comes up (either "excessive" advertising, or "misdirected" R&D), the first capillary Joe Average Commenter lunges for is the quality-of-life ("vanity") drugs, Viagra notably. Typical usage:
"So instead of getting a new cancer cure, the drug companies don't pursue it very much because they don't make as much money from one-time fixes and instead we get large budgets for television advertising and Viagra drugs because those are more profitable!!!!111!"
It helps if you froth and spit while repeating the above, but even some relatively smart and level-headed people fall for this one because the logic is plausible, even if it isn't strictly rational or backed by cumbersome evidence.
SSRIs are often derided as "me-too" drugs as well.
Strikes me that part of the problem is not enough time with our doctor to go over our overall health; so instead, we learn about our restless leg syndrome, insomnia, depression, anxiety disorder, and sexual function from TV commercials.
Zic -
Similar to how doctor's get ALOT of their education about drugs from drug reps.
Unfortunately, doctor's are trained (by both med schools and their practices) to spend as little time as possible with the patient to maximize the number of patients they can see in a given day.
Not all doctor's apply that training, but they don't want to spend time with you to explore your own thoughts on your health.
Joe
Well, the scarcity of Drs in many places makes this a necessity, else there would be even more rationing. Under Obamacare, this practice will be even further exaggerated, as it is in Canada.
Holdfast - It's not necessarily the scarcity of doctor's (if that was the case, they could take much longer with each patient and just focus on providing the best care possible to each).
It's the payment structure of our existing system. Especially MediCare, which will pay a doctor a very limited amount of money for his time (which he therefore minimizes with the patient and/or passes on a higher bill to other patients)
Also, re: Medicare, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/business/retirementspecial/02health.html
Would anyone really tell their doctor that "I kick my wife/husband/boyfriend/girlfriend in my sleep"?
Sounds like a good way to get more government attention than you want.
The ED drug Cialis has very weird side effects and should be banned. Instead, the maker actually touts these in their ads.
What other drug makes you end up sitting in a bathtub, presumably naked, in public - out in a field or on a beach or someplace else? Interestingly, these side effects pass from the man to the woman. This is obvious because every Cialis ad ends with the man and woman sitting in bathtubs on a beach or in a field, or whatever.
It just shows that the FDA is in the back pocket of big pharma. It's either that or bathtub makers are paying off the regulators, since bathtub sales must be booming. How? OH HOW? can our government allow the sale of a drug that makes you sit in a bathtub out in the middle of nowhere?
There are some Cialis studies going on right now that are absolutely fascinating and appear to show that it might actually significantly improve enlarged prostate (benign prostate hyperplasia). I have no idea as to what the data actually shows, so don't get me wrong...could be not worth it.
What's fascinating to me is that apparently about 70% of men over the age of 45 who experience the symptoms of BPH (frequent night peeing, frequent urge to pee, etc.) also experience Erectile Dysfunction.
And if you, as Megan states, you think Erectile Dysfunction is not a disease, then you've probably got a problem with alot of the field of psychiatry.
Lulz--my wife and I have noticed the same thing. "Let's throw the remote away, do a bit of snuggling, and end up looking at a sunset in separate bathtubs that clearly can't be hooked up to running water."
Reminds me of a great parody of the old Calgon commercials.
Woman slips into bathtub sighing "Calgon, take me away".
Woman is transported to a brightly lit field, birds chirping, she sighs with contentment and slips deeper into the bubbles.
Flash forward to that night, dark field, coyotes howling in the distance, crickets chirp.
Woman huddles in tub pleading "Calgon, take me back! TAKE ME BACK!"
I always figured the guy was too tired to get it up after hauling those stupid tubs and water out to the lake.
Ed, you seem like a smart guy and probably have suspected it is more complicated than that. The people are drinking and taking Ambien also. I always advise people to 'dress for bed' before taking Ambien unless they wouldn't be embarrassed to be naked in the front yard. Delirium might do that to you.
Interesting tidbit related to Megan's asterisk: Viagra has come full circle at least a little bit.
The molecule we all know as Viagra is also approved for the treatment of Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension - a particularly nasty form of hypertension with quite low life expectancy for patients. The product is marketed under a different trade name: Revatio. See www.revatio.com.
Given the relatively low prevalence of PAH, it is pretty likely that Pfizer wouldn't have invested in developing a molecule for that condition alone, given costs of bringing something to market.
And its use for pulmonary hypertension has been remarkably important in very sick little kids. Pediatric cardiologists prescribe an immense amount of Viagra.
Yes! Somebody has made this point! Viagra has been life-saving and life-changing for kids with idiopathic persistent pulmonary hypertension! Their only other two choices prior to Viagra:
1. 24 hr, 7 day/wk continuous IV infusion of a drug to relax the pulmonary artery. If the line fell out, became clogged, med ran out, machine broke, etc, kids had to call 911 to get to a hospital within a few hours or:
2. A quick death from heart failure.
And there's no way, ever, a drug to treat this condition would have been developed. There are not enough cases.
I can't say I find the attempts to link anti-Viagra sentiment to "the left" very convincing.
1. If the only person you can quote is an anonymous, allegedly left-wing commenter (as opposed to a liberal columnist, pundit, politician, or even a well-known blogger), that doesn't suggest a very strong link.
2. The examples cited seem to be criticisms of allegedly excessive advertising by pharma companies, which use Viagra merely as a very familiar example. (And indeed there seem to be more Viagra ads than ads for other medicines, at least on the channels I watch.)
3. The link in Megan's post takes us to an article where someone criticizes Viagra ads on decency grounds. That's not a "progressive" sentiment.
I understand that Megan and many of her readers don't like liberals, but that doesn't mean you can associate them with everything that happens to irk you.
The human experience being what it is, some of us gradually amalgamate our experiences into a more general picture of what kind of groups people associate themselves with, and what those groups tend to do or think. Not all of those perceptions are accurate and may even be worthy of mocking, and some are too devestatingly accurate to be conscioned, so they are rationalized away by persons who are worried about being associated with it.
I suppose we could argue all day over whose perceptions are whose, but since that wouldn't be profitable, you can take away from this whatever you like.
Suffice to say that Old People Having Sex, while not exactly high on my list of desirable thought or reading material, is not exceedingly offensive to me, especially considering that each day, my computer monitor gets spammed with polka-dot bikini babes whose only excuse for making an appearance in their wedding night apparel is (a) the miraculous results they obtained through Snakeoil Inc.'s stomach-flattening programming, and (b) how this pays for my free webmail service.
Thanks, Mouse, for agreeing to tolerate the thought of Old People Having Sex. Now that I am 56, I have a personal stake in the matter . . . although of course as the years pass I find that the boundary of what I consider "old age" keeps mysteriously advancing. Have you noticed how many hot women there are in their fifties these days?
Nonsense, I have yet to see more then a handful of hot 50-something women. Mary McDonnell is the exception that proves the rule.
Dudes, Viagra is a RECREATIONAL drug. Admittedly not as much fun as MDMA, but then again few things are.
Re: Ambien, the really nice thing about the development of Ambien and related drugs is fewer side effects than old-time over the counter sleeping aids and far less addictive potential than old-time prescription sleep aids. That's a real advance.
No, Viagra is not a recreational drug. A drug that allows someone to partake of a normal human activity, when that activity is unavailable to them for underlying medical reasons, is not a "recreational drug". If your allergy medication allows you to go outside and play soccer, which is fun for you, that doesn't make your allergy medication "recreational".
I was actually just kidding--must not have been as funny as I thought. Being a member of the male half of the species, I am glad there's a treatment out there should it ever befall me.
Sorry to reply twice, but giving your response a bit more thought: calling a drug recreational wasn't meant as a slam. I admire the recreational aspect of some pharmaceuticals. I've had a lot of, uh, recreation in the past and enjoyed every bit of it.
You have Restless Schlong Syndrome. There's a pill for that.
I suffered from RLS for *years*, before I read that it's connected to a deficiency in magnesium and/or potassium. Since I started taking mineral supplements, I've been sleeping much better. It's incredibly uncomfortable, and people who don't have it will never understand that.
Unless you live with someone with RLS :)
But yeah
Just as long as the supplements are taken in moderate amounts, and not via the "some=good, more=better" approach. I knew a woman who was so paranoid about potassium defficiency she stopped her own heart by overdosing on supplements.
See, that would have been solved by defib kits being marketed as a home safety measure.
save your money. buy some weed. smoke a few joints. you'll be asleep in no time.
But you wont wake up feeling refreshed, and the munchies might just cause you to gain a few pounds.
But that's not a problem anymore.
I'll add one thing to this:
Many, many lay-people AND medical professionals think that the pharmaceutical industry "invented" Fibromyalgia. It's one of those diseases that is a physical manifestation of symptoms that can only be confirmed by the patient self-reporting pain in certain places. It has no "lab values" and it's not considered a psychiatric disorder I.e. it's not in the DSM-IV.
So many medical professionals think it's psycho-somatic or another existing disease and that the pharmaceutical world has "pushed it" into the collective consciousness.
But no matter what, at the end of the day, there are apparently about 4 million people in the U.S. (90% women) who experience substantial un-diagnosable pain in all four quadrants of their body and in consistent locations.
And at the end of the day, the pharmaceutical companies are trying to offer a pain-management solution to those people. It's a profit motive, absolutely....you've got 4 million people with a disease that is essentially untestable in the lab (as of right now), so it has no known cure nor the ability to find a cure, and it involves chronic pain. So people are going to regularly dose, every day, with some medication.
But that doesn't mean it's not a fantastic thing to offer 4 million people an improvement in their quality of life.
Joe
I recently had been seeing my ~84 year old grandfather start to decline in his mental capacity. Which is a shame, cause he's an absolute icon of the greatest generation. Limitless in his selflessness, generous and kind, intelligent and well-spoken....
Then I found out that for the past 5 years or so, he hasn't slept more than 2 hours at a time due to an enlarged prostate and the constant and painful urge to urinate after an hour or two. And 2 failed surgeries.
I talked to him after his 3rd, recent, surgery. He slept 6 hours straight, which he hadn't done in ~5 years. He sounded clearer than he had in years...he even heard me better over the phone, responded faster to concepts I posed, etc.
And about 3 months ago my grandmother had brought him in to be tested for early stage Alzheimer's.
Chronic lack of sufficient sleep is beyond debilitating. It's life-threatening.
And to paraphrase Ben Franklin, "Don't waste time, for that is the stuff life is made of..."
As for sleep; ever tried melatonin or theanine? Both are well tolerated. Theanine is a tea extract. Not as strong as proscription drugs and you have to cycle off it periodically, but no known negative side effects otherwise.
Not that I have anything against Viagra, but I find the comparison between it and abstinence education and birth control fairly weak. People who are in favor of birth control availability and against abstinence only education are typically basing these opinions on pragmatic grounds. I.E., nothing that we can do is going to stop people from having sex, so they might as well be safe about it and hopefully end up with less unwanted pregnancies and disease transmission. Compare that to the guy with ED, sure he is bummed out that he can't have sex, or at least not as often as he might want...but is there a larger harm to society here...is there a big pool of guys with ED that used to go on murderous rampages until Viagra was invented? If not, I think a pretty reasonable argument can be made that society as a whole wants to encourage safe sex...but see no reason why we would especially want to encourage ED treatments.
So what you're saying is that we can't stop teens from having sex, so let 'em go at it, but we can stop old guys from having sex, so that's A-OK?
Pretty much...although I'd not frame it as "stopping" old guys from having sex, so much as not doing anything in particular to enable it. (Although I realize in philosophical circles that distinction is not particularly noteworthy)
So if teens required medication to have sex, you'd be in favour of abstinence-only sex ed?
It seems that a solution would be a reverse-viagra. Take this pill once a month and no sex for you. Pills are distributed at school. Problem solved!
"So if teens required medication to have sex, you'd be in favour of abstinence-only sex ed?"
Not really what I'm saying at all. In fact abstinence-only sex ed for teens who can't have sex seems like an even bigger waste of time then it does for teens that can have sex. In neither case will it change behavior, if teens can have sex they'll just ignore it, and if they can't have sex, then what is the point of telling them they can't have sex?
I'm a pretty poor writer, so I apologize if my point hasn't been coming through very clearly, but I'll try again one more time. There are (at least arguably) negative externalities to people having sex without protection from unwanted pregnancies and disease. So as far as you believe that is true, then there is a public interest in providing things like realistic sex-education and making sure birth control is affordable and easily available.
I can't see a similar public interest argument being made for ED. That's not to say that I think Viagra shouldn't be available, but the arguments that complain about Viagra advertisements and the arguments against abstinence only education, come from different sets of principles, and it is possible to hold both views without being hypocritical.
I suppose that's more reasonable.
Megan, you've relegated it to tiny print, but the fact that Viagra is a result of a failed attempt at treating a "real" disease is significant. Other vanity drugs, like Propecia (which helps some men slow or reverse their hairloss, or androgenetic alopecia), have a similar history. In the case of Propecia (finasteride), a drug developed to treat prostrate inflammation turned out to have this side effect. So Merck repackaged it in a lower dose, launched a marketing campaign, and now they charge a ton of money for it. I find this to be a terrific justification for the big marketing budgets at Big Pharma -- they rake it in by selling people something they don't NEED, but want, for quality of life reasons. There is nothing wrong with this on its face. And then the drug companies have more money to develop drugs to treat, you know, angina. I'm sure it doesn't always work just like that, but it's something to think about.
Also, Ambien is in my top 20 best things ever to happen to me, too.
RLS treatment IS indeed a poster child for the "ask your doctor" form of advertising that encourages (profitable!) treatment of a condition that your doctor might not have thought to be a "medical" issue.
As a condition that is (a) difficult to diagnose and (b) associated with many other basic nutritional and behavioral issues, it's rife with opportunities to bypass our established standards for drug treatment: that benefit be proved in carefully controlled studies that give the doctor a basis for prescribing treatment. Just like the other direct-to-consumer drugs.
There's a similarity to the concern with "nutritional supplements" that are basically unregulated drugs -- not the labels, but in-the-store marketing materials touting the products claim drug-type benefits. E.g., cinnamon pills for elevated blood sugar, the basis for which apparently rests on a tiny trial by non-medical research types in a cinnamon-growing region of South Asia. Here's a major health concern trivialized with a likely bogus solution, thanks to commercial interest over-riding all our social standards for public health.
Neither example is meant to disparage the seriousness of either diabetes or RLS; just the opposite.
I highlight them to express frustration that our society's access to quality, informed advice has been harmed by a shift to self-interested marketing, driving out the preponderance of expert opinion that used to be the rule. This loss of efficiency afflicts all of us through our social programs and lower economic status due to building a whole economy on treatments that only incidentally provide a real benefit, and therefore have a very high cost per actual benefit received. Doctors are absolutely NOT the sole source of smart medical information, but why wouldn't you rather live in a society where we work to increase the quality of information about caring for our people?
This is not unlike the harm imposed on small investors by "advisors" who get paid to push particular products, and then replace them with "better" products a year or two down the road. I'd love to have the SEC emulate Britain's FSA in requiring that anybody calling himself an "advisor" or "counselor" receive nothing from the firms whose products he pushes, and that all such payments (commissions or spiffs) be disclosed to the gulls.
TreeJoe,
It heartens me to hear that your Grandpa is felling better. May he continue to be healthy.
Thanks man. I pray it stays. I'm not a fan of surgical intervention after 2 failed attempts already, unless there is a radically new procedure involved.
To me the CR technology betrays the essence of the pharmaceutical company which is to serve you the customer along with making money in the process. No Nobels are going to be issued for it. If it were solely up to academic medicine, the potential benefit (and desire for it) would be dealt with, as the phrase goes in 'Home Alone,' 'shut up you filthy animal and take your medicine' (it works good enough).
I'm a physician who has restless legs (RLS). If you have RLS bad, anything that works is good. I don't think that there's any particular problem taking Ambien or Ambien CR. Some people taking do things in the middle of the night, like drive cars, while asleep. People can have restless legs during the day too. For them, Ambien would not be a good choice.
I take Lyrica which works for me. Neurontin, a similar medicine, did not work. Requip, Requip XL, Mirapex work for people too.
Some people are iron deficient or vitamin D deficient, and, for them, taking iron or vitamin D works. Sometimes people notice that certain medicines, like antidepressants or caffeine, make symptoms worse.
It's odd, but restless legs often varies from day to day, night to night.
I've been reading your blog for awhile and this is my first (maybe my last) chance to comment.
Megan:
Actually, Viagra was a failed attempt to treat angina, which I think most of us recognize as a Certified Real Disease.
I'm confused. How can there be a failed attempt at drug development? Don't pharma companies just come up with a logo after the universities do all the real work?
More seriously, Dennis Mangan claims that niacin cured his mother's RLS. I can't vouch for it personally, not having had any need to try it, but it's worth a shot.
ED is a fake disease. If men kept themselves healthier over their years, they would have trouble getting a boner in their 50s. It's all related to diet + exercise.
So what if that's true.
Yeah, ok. It can be physiologic or psychologic, absolutely, but it's not "fake" even by your own defintion. That's like saying less people would have Type 2 diabetes if they exercised and ate right.
Further, lots of thin, exercising men get ED as a side effect of a prostate disorder.
Primates seem to have an innate preference for fairness -- I've found this leads us to assume that things are fair because we would like them to be. In particular, whenever a medical condition is linked statistically to some behavior which the culture considers sinful, we tend to think of this as some form of justice, and overstate the link between the disease and the behavior.
But disease is not justice, it's disease, and justifying disease has no place in a rational society. Actions have consequences, but that does not mean that any particular action should ideally have any particular consequence.
Those who preach self-control as a panacea seem unaware that the brain is a massively complex system which cannot manufacture self-control at will.
ED is a fake disease. If men kept themselves healthier over their years, they would have trouble getting a boner in their 50s. It's all related to diet + exercise.
Heart failure is a fake disease. If men kept themselves healthier over their years, they wouldn't have trouble pumping blood in their 50s. It's all related to diet + exercise.
Skin cancer is a fake disease. If men kept themselves healthier over their years, they wouldn't have trouble with melanomas in their 50s. It's all related to sun exposure and skin care.
This word you keep using: I don't think it means what you think it means.
I'm honestly not sure which political party moralizes more about the dangers of prescription drugs. But as the comments on this post show, there's a lot of it.
I wish we lived in a Utopia where we all had great genes which both sustained us and attracted us to perfect lifestyles.
But life doesn't work that way.
Yeah, I see no problem with forcing my doctor to give me any medication that I want. If the advertisement was effective at influencing me that must mean the drug is effective as well. Plus, people with no medical education what so ever that saw an Ambien commercial are usually better than doctors at making these decisions. Why don't we just get rid of prescriptions and allow anyone and everyone to go get what ever pill they want? What could go wrong there?
.... wait, nm.
come on now. I had a doctor who had a very negative view of basic prescription drugs. He was a big believer that Americans have it easy and should tolerate more pain.
I changed doctors and I couldn't be happier.
Bedmondson -
Yeah, and every single doctor in the country spends 30 minutes with their patients going over the core aspects of their lives. They also spend hours a week reading up on new drugs, pharmacogenomics, pharmacokinetics, side effect profiles, and make a value-weighted decision on whether to prescribe a drug to each patient based upon a detailed patient self-reporting of the severity of their symptoms vs. the potential side effect profile of the drug.
Drug Advertisements don't work in a vacuum. And any doctor can refuse to script for a patient, or take the time to talk them out of it, etc.
You can't "force" your doctor to give you any prescription unless you slip a gun into the office, and during the aftermath of that exercise, you will find your living conditions, roommates, and choice in physicians substantially reduced from what you had before.
The LEFT foams at the mouth about Big Pharma. News magazines, blogs and the dullards and drones that you meet in DC and NYC.
Big Pharma is evil to the left. I have seen Andrew Sullivan speak up for pharmaceutical companies (maybe living with HIV will do that), but it is usually a bugaboo, despite their producing some of the most useful (quality of life-enhancing) products out there. Does a nice car really improve the quality of life? A Lexus or Beemer?
What Megan describes are not recreational drugs, they are arguably quality of life drug. Why would anyone - not just a libertarian - be opposed to relatively safe drugs people can take to sleep, have sex, engage in reasonable physical activity, be free of allergies? Many of the arguements are described above.
People can live out the last 30-40 years of their lives as cranky,chronically tired, sexless, depressed and pained old/young coots, or they can avail themselves of what science has to offer. I know what I would choose.
I dispute your notion that one needs pharmaceuticals to prevent being "cranky, chronically tired, sexless, depressed and pained" the last 30-40 years of life. Of course I'm only 32, but I can insist on that.
Do you really think people on the left vilify Big Pharma because they think it's inherently wrong for people to take medications that help them sleep, have sex, or fight allergies?
Conservatives will say anything to scare people about Obama.
Some will, yes. Politics attracts those kind of people. Most conservatives bashing Obama do so because they think his policies are bad, the same reason most liberals attacked Bush.
Why is restless leg syndrome always the poster child for people who hate pharma advertising?
Probably because for many people RLS and insomnia are related to their diet and lifestyle and rather than make changes in those, people will reach for the drugs that Big Pharma is only too happy to tell them they need instead.
If you haven't tried supplementing with magnesium (which is not overabundant in the typical American diet, and is depleted by stress, refined carbs, alcohol, etc.) I would urge you to do so. Make sure it's an absorbable form such as magnesium taurate or magnesium glycinate NOT the crap that's most likely to be in your multiple or on drugstore shelves - magnesium oxide. Sometimes a simple supplementation might not be enough and more experimentation may be necessary to find the ratio of calcium, magnesium and potassium that's right for you (very rarely are we deficient in sodium). Or maybe it's B vitamins, essential fatty acids, all of the above, or something else. Waking up too early could be a blood sugar issue which in itself may suggest a magnesium deficiency. This is not "old wive's tale stuff". Magnesium is necessary for over 300 functions in the body. It's function in muscle is as a relaxant while calcium's is to contract, so muscle cramps indicate a need for magnesium.
RLS and insomnia are horrible (been there, done that, for years) but Ambien is not a long term solution.
I think the problem you pose (and which I posed too at one point) is that you put down the usefulness of one tool while touting another.
All of these are tools:
Diet/Exercise/Supplementation/Lifestyle Modification
Pharmaceutical Intervention
Surgery
And you know what? A kinesiologist or exercise physiologist (or similar) will promote the first, a drug company AND many doctors will promote the second, and a surgeon will promote the third.
All are umbrellas for a wide range of potential therapies/tools, and every one has a purpose in the toolbox.
People who are dismissive of a tool simply don't know when and where it should be used.
I never understood why there are so many different types of claw hammers. Doesn't mean they each didn't do the best job at a specific application.
Joe
P.s. This statement actually bothered me, "It's function in muscle is as a relaxant while calcium's is to contract, so muscle cramps indicate a need for magnesium. "
Muscle cramps can indicate a very wide variety of things, including low calcium (which is the opposite of what your sentence implies). Or dehydration. Or so many other things (a person can have polysomnia and be squeezing the muscle until it cramps, which all the magnesium in the world isn't going to cure).
In the quest to be simplistic, you went about 19 steps too far.
Muscle cramps can indicate a very wide variety of things, including low calcium (which is the opposite of what your sentence implies).
You're right. I actually meant to say "muscle cramps MAY indicate a need for magnesium". In my experience with those foot and toe cramps combined with that almost indescrible RLS "nerve" feeling, magnesium has usually done the trick but there have been times, which I was avoiding dairy for instance, when calcium worked when magnesium didn't. It's my understanding as well as my experience, that the relationship of calcium to magnesium is complex, synergistic and antagonistic. Calcium with not enough magnesium to enable it to work properly may functionally be "low calcium" too.
I haven't heard of "polysomnia" and neither have the medical dictionaries I consulted but it sounds like if a person is squeezing a muscle, a little relaxant is in order -- magnesium! ;)
(I'm not really hear to argue, just wanted to make the suggestion really, per my own experience in case it might benefit someone else.)
Lol, you mistype about "MAY indicate" and I mistype "Polysomnia"
I meant parasomnia, or essentially sleepwalking (although many people just perform activities while lying completely still).
People sometimes get severe headaches because they clench or grind their teeth while sleeping, and jaw pain. They can also get severe muscle cramps because they are contracting the muscle so hard in their sleep and don't even realize it.
Proper mineral balances are of paramount importance in the body, absolutely. And all sorts of weird problems can occur with long-term diet imbalances (from neuropathy to scurvy!).
Btw, I had tremendous experiences with straight flaxseed oil (tablespoon straight into my mouth)....but I know that won't happen for everyone.
The "lifestyle modifications" are rarely free (in terms of time, money, perceived quality of life, what have you). Why isn't the ability to achieve similar ends while avoiding this expense, or trading one expense for another (e.g. time for money) valuable?
Anyone who objects to Viagra is not green.
The invention of Viagra has done wonderful things for quelling some of the traffic in endangered animal parts -- those that folk medicine regarded as treatments for impotence.
It seems to me that drug companies are only interested in funding clinical trials for money-making drugs. I have nothing against the drugs mentioned here, but it seems that all the interest and advertising results in large amounts of money going to develop these popular drugs, almost to the exclusion of any willingness to fund trials for less popular things. In other words, if you have a disease or condition that is rare, good luck, you are more or less cut off. I'm not saying conditions which affect larger groups shouldn't attract more money, but I just wish there was something left over for those less popular ones.
As a father of a child with Down syndrome, I am experiencing this first hand. There are currently drugs waiting to be tested in trials, but no drug companies are willing to fund those trials. Why?... no significant market. Very sad.
Ahem,
Yes, this is very accurate. A drug company is not in the business of making a drug that will cost $100,000 per pill and that may, or may not, only be taken by 5000 people.
They are in the business of developing a drug that is successful at treating something for as many people as possible.
In many circles, it would be considered a noble goal to put your resources towards producing a better quality of life for the largest possible population.
But drug companies are shunned because of it.
Just curious - What exactly are the drugs being held back for down syndrome? It's a chromosomal disorder, so I'm curious what drugs are available that could somehow alter the status of the genetic make-up of the body.
FYI - There are ~300,000 people with down syndrome in the U.S.....that's a plenty large enough market for drug companies. By comparison, Multiple Sclerosis has about 350-400k in the U.S.
In other words, stop repeating easily reputed falsehoods
TreeJoe,
Well, I confess I'm no expert about drug marketing. But I have been told this by a couple of researchers in the field (Dr. W. Mobley and Dr. C Garner at Stanford) who are currently trying to get gaba inhibitors (there are a few, and I don't know much about them) into clinical trials. These drugs have been demonstrated to improve memory and learning in mouse models of Down syndrome. My understanding is that doing human clinical trials on their limited academic budgets is not feasible unless they can get millions, not hundred thousands of dollars. I have been told that NIH is good at funding academic research, but not so good at following through with human trials. That's where drug companies tend to step in with more money. It seems that there is a funding gap that slows things down considerably.
I'm not an expert, and I could be wrong. I don't know how companies decide what is marketable, do you? Anyway, that's what I've been told.
Thanks for responding.
Of course the REASON clinical trials are so expensive is largely because of the government regulations.
Not that we want free range experimentation on humans. Only the alternative medicine industry is that evil.
"the REASON clinical trials are so expensive is largely because of the government regulations"
I suppose that this is true in the trivial sense that if there were no government regulations, it would not be necessary for companies to do clinical trials at all. But given that we are going to do clinical trials, the primary reason that they are so expensive is that they involve large numbers of sick people, which tends to entail such expenses as doctors, nurses, hospital rooms, and diagnostic tests.
By the way, as you probably know there was some research on Alzheimer's drugs in Down Syndrome children, and the possibility that they would improve their speech function and a few other areas.
http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=&recr=&rslt=&type=&cond=Down+Syndrome&intr=&outc=&lead=&spons=&id=&state1=&cntry1=&state2=&cntry2=&state3=&cntry3=&locn=&gndr=&age=0&age=1&age=2&phase=1&phase=2&phase=3&fund=2&rcv_s=&rcv_e=&lup_s=&lup_e=
There's a list of 5 industry-sponsored studies of such. As you can see, one is still recruiting subjects (Bayer) and that's not a treatment study necessarily (and the Down Syndrome subjects need to be over 40)
The 3 studies for the treatment of down's syndrome were terminated or due to lack of efficacy of the drug. One was completed, and it looks like the evidence was not sufficient so they terminated the other studies.
Can you point me to some down's syndrome possibility that has actually been "not pursued"?
Joe
Yes, those studies have been ongoing. Dr. Craig Garner did an experiment using PTZ, and a couple other drugs in 2007 with his then student Dr. Fernandez. This is not related to Alzheimers, though that is Dr. Mobley's interest. They have been trying to start trials on these new drugs, but it's taking longer than they expected for reasons I described in my second post.
The 2007 study really was ground breaking, so it's hard to understand why it should take so long to get trials going.
"Bite the Bullet" opening scene:
Cowboy bellies up to the bar, says:
Barkeep, what are the pills in this bowl ?
Barkeep replies: Try it, you'll like it;
Its called Heroin.
The FDA started out as a necessary check
on cases like the above, and has done a
lot of good since, but about fifty years
ago something (Thalidomide ?) tipped the
risk/benefit balance, and it has been
downhill ever since, to the point that today
it is arguably doing more harm than good.
Example: The FDA has tried, in defiance of
its own charter, to regulate biochemicals,
including those produced by the human body.
Decline in production of these causes many of
the symptoms of aging; Replacement products
counter the effects. People taking them
live longer, happier, more productive lives,
only because the FDA has not succeeded in
preventing them from doing so - so far.
@M.Report
only because the FDA has not succeeded in preventing them from doing so - so far.
I think you are wrong. I think you'll find that the FDA has jumped all over a number of biochemicals produced in the human body.
Just try to buy some testosterone, or Human Growth hormone. Or EPO.
I have big problems with advertising drugs on TV, that does not mean I have a problem with the drugs themselves.
We use a number of drugs ourselves being Americans of a certain age. I do wonder how much less the cost of the drugs might be if the drug companies were not spending so much money advertising.
Jules -
The drugs might cost more if the companies weren't advertising, because the cost to develop and distribute the drugs would be amortized over a smaller amount of drug sales.
Joe
The advertisements also give warnings about potential side effects, interactions and proper use of the drug. If ObamaCare was discussed in the same way, you wouldn't be so reliant on Megan.
Yawn.
A lot of these are just more examples of one partisan side making the other's arguments. Apparently they think it's strategic instead of blatantly expedient (and stupidly so).
Or maybe it's just a common idiocy. I understand why someone would think the ads themselves are ephemeral frippery and maybe that's enough to dismiss the problems too (as long as you're not personally affected).
The dismissal of viagra from the left is often phrased in some variant of the following:
"It is ridiculous that health insurance companies pay for viagra for men, yet don't pay for birth control for women."
Just how legitimate discussions about health insurance and medication devolve into snark once it goes through progressive mental filters is left as an exercise for the reader.
Megan
Your posts listing the various maladies suffered by yourself and your fiancee seem to indicate that unfortunately you are both suffering from the syndrome of life unworthy of living. Fortunately, the health care bill that is currently before Congress offers counceling for this condition that can lead to a permanent solution. Unfortunately this counceling will not be immediately available for people as young as you and the cure is not yet available outside of Oregon.
However, as we move past partisan politics in order to fix our hopelessly broken health care system, I am sure that these services will be made available to you as we reject the failed policies of the last eight years and implement a desperately needed domestic Aktion T4 policy.
No, I think people on the left vilify Big Pharma because they want to decide if Big Pharam makes medications that help them sleep, have sex, or fight allergies and, if made, who gets to take them.
"Actually, Viagra was a failed attempt to treat angina, which I think most of us recognize as a Certified Real Disease."
The drug, under a different trade name, is used to tread pulmonary hypertension, which is a nasty disease.
I use melatonin and 5HTP for insomnia. Works pretty well.
@ doctorpat: The FDA does regulate biochemicals:
testosterone, Human Growth hormone, EPO.
You are correct, and apparently justifiably annoyed;
The FDA has its reasons, which are not always noble.
The examples I had in mind are not expensive,
controversial, or dangerous, yet they were still
subject to scrutiny: Melatonin, Co-Q10, SAM-e, NADH,
and even Glucosamine-Condroitin.
A paranoid person would suspect that the State had
it in for aging Boomers like me, and would like
to hurry us along to a better place by denying us
Meds which keep us going; Can't imagine why. :>
We both know why, and MM might do a cost/benefit on
keeping the aging edge of the workforce productive.
Ahem. I don't think most people have a problem with Viagra, per se. I don't(but then again, I'm not on 'the left'.) The problem is with using Viagra as an example of the 'innovation' that justifies why pharmaceutical companies must be allowed to operate the way they do. If these companies were producing new drugs that, say, were really effective in treating various skin cancers, or a drug that could gobble up prions, or a drug that actually neutralized HIV instead of merely containing it, then the argument about innovation would have some force.
But the idea that pills that could be sold profitably for $20 must be sold for $200 in order to fund 'research' into new and improved Viagra analogues doesn't seem to sit too well with a lot of people, most of whom could in no way shape or form be characterized as 'leftists'.
I can't speak to the Viagra distraction, but EVERY time I hear complaints about "big pharma" creating "useless drugs" "for profit" and "medicalizing life" it comes from the left.
A couple of years ago I was pissed when someone on my team announced, with complete confidence but without having done the slightest bit of research (of course), that Restless Leg Syndrome was a "made up" disease designed to make profits for big pharma without actually helping anyone. I was annoyed enough at this to do the necessary research and send out pointers to dispel the misinformation.
To make matters worse, this was from someone who had already sent out an email about a condition his father suffered from and urging everyone to recognize the reality and seriousness of it.
I think the thing that bothers me most when I encounter this is that it ALWAYS involves someone who pronounces what is reality without having having the slightest bit of actual knowledge about what they are holding forth on.
Really? I'm hardly "from the left" and you're hearing it from me. Last weekend I was down in Rush Limbaugh country at the biannual family gathering(actually, the Seminary Picnic), and I heard similar sentiments from cousins wearing Roundup caps and chewing Red Man.
In any event, what is your point? That if you hear about something only from "the left" that it can't be true? Need I comment on the obvious logical fallacy?