"Are drugs ads hazardous to your health?"

[Cleita]

Pharmaceutical companies say they are educational; doctors beg to differ

By Herb Weisbaum
MSNBC contributor
updated 12:43 p.m. PT, Wed., April. 9, 2008

<snip>
If you watched TV, read a newspaper, or flipped through a magazine this week, there’s a very good chance you saw a few advertisements for prescription drugs. They’re hard to miss. It’s not uncommon for a 30-minute network newscast to have four or five drug commercials.

Pharmaceutical manufacturers spend $5 billion dollars a year to market prescription drugs directly to American consumers.

According to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the goal of these ads is to make patients and doctors better partners by giving them “accurate information about disease and treatment options.” PhRMA says this brings patients into their doctor’s offices “and starts important doctor-patient conversations about health that might otherwise not have happened.”<snip>

<snip>
The medical bill in this country is staggering – around $7,500 per person – more than any other country on the planet. There are many reasons for this, but prescription drug costs are a significant contributor. “These ads drive up costs dramatically," says Peter Lurie of the Health Research Group.<snip>

More at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24033768/

I take two pills a day that I have to have that cost me $10 each and that is the co-pay on a prescription drug benefit. This advertising is apparently what I am paying for.

[Warpy]

1. Drug ads boost sales to people who are unqualified

to diagnose themselves as having one illness or another. Drug ads are carefully worded to describe such general symptoms that most of us fit the profile on a bad day. Drug ads represent appalling ethics on behalf of Big Pill.

Drug ads cause people to clamor for medications they don't need and to doctor shop until they get them. Many physicians will write one prescription on the theory that the suckers won't feel any better on the miracle drug and won't bother to finish the bottle, let alone get it refilled. This is what drives the massive sales increase of advertised drugs.

My own policy as an uninsurable person is to avoid medications that haven't been around long enough to become available as generics, preferably on the cut rate drug lists at Wally's, Target or Costco. I am lucky that I can be maintained on generics at present.

[kdmorris]

5. Amen!

The only drug I take that isn't cut rate or older than the drug companies themselves is Byetta. It has really helped me keep my blood sugar down without the super increase of insulin that Prandin was giving me.

Because drug ads are so general, and so many people have clamored for these drugs, doctors have started looking at those of us who try to be informed about our disease(s) with a wary eye. Luckily, I have a holistic doctor now that doesn't try to prescribe me drug after drug after drug and allows me to be a partner in my own health care. If he does prescribe a drug for me, he explains why and what it's for.

[katmondoo]

2. Lunesta

A hypnotic type sleep aid is $166.oo for 30 pills. I refused my doctors advice to take this. Scares me.

[damntexdem]

3. Not the drugs so much as their prices.

But there some pretty-iffy drugs out there, too.

[Summer93]

4. Side effects

Is Lunesta the product that along with aiding sleep brings with it amnesia of whatever one is doing during that sleep. Wasn't it Joe Kennedy who drove and had an accident. I had also read about a woman who put on a lot of weight as while she sleeping she would get up an eat but then had amnesia about it.

[WildClarySage]

6. I'm not sure if you're thinking of Lunesta or Ambien, or perhaps

both drugs responsible for both types of behaviors. My dad has to take Ambien to sleep sometimes when his cancer pain is too much to allow him to rest. He hates to take it though, says his dreams become violent and frightening.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

7. There are sundry items that can save you from the toxic effects

of prescription drugs.

http://www.amazon.com/Prescription-Alternatives-Hundreds-Prescription-Free-Remedies/dp/0879839899
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51SF310TSML._SL500_BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU01_AA240_SH20_.jpg

An Absolute Must For Every Home! I give it 10 stars!, January 31, 2001
By Karen Villanueva "authorcare" (Albuquerque, NM United States) - See all my reviews
Earl Mindell and Virginia Hopkins have provided one of the most important books of the CENTURY. So many of us listen to our doctors and take the prescriptions offered without THINKING. It is time for pill-poppers to wake up to the motives of the pharmaceutical companies, and to the very dangerous risks we take when we pop a prescription pill without investigating its long term effects.

This book has become a Health Bible for me and my friends. I tell people about it every day. If there is one thing you do for those you love, let it be to buy them this book.

Prescription Alternatives provides live-saving information. It informs us of the risks we take when we blindly accept any prescription our doctors offer. It provides us with all of the alternative choices that won't just suppress or mask a symptom but will change our health in the best and safest way possible. When are we, as a nation of consumers, going to take back the responsibility of maintaining our health? Don't take my word for it, read up on the facts for yourself. Then go out and buy a copy for every one you love! The natural food and supplement stores will love you for it!

[TZ]

8. Ah yes of course the author of this book

Has no monetary motive in selling their advice either. Give me a fucking break. The supplement industry is a billion dollar industry .
All prescription drugs go through 10+ years of tox studies. The shit you push has no tox studies done on them. Now who is irresponsibly selling dangerous "medicine'?

[HysteryDiagnosis]

9. Billion dollars you say.... then people who are purchasing these

ineffective unsafe materials should be stacked up like cordwood awaiting their turn for a dirtnap. My my my, they must have a lot of repeat customers, which should rule out the cordwood issue.

[Edward-M]

10. the best drugs grow on the ground

aspirin is basic tree bark extract, mix that with some marijuana & you'll feel fine. that's how we poor americans relieve pain because prescriptions cost thousands of dollars