It’ll never not be fascinating how people think peddling advanced medicine directly to the consumer is a normal thing to do.
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.
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.
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.
The worst I’ve seen is “may cause a fatal infection of the skin of the perineum.”
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.
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.
