Big pharma discredited by Twitter drug-pushing: Official A pharmaceutical company's use of Twitter to promote medicines discredited the industry, a regulatory body has ruled. The Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority (PMCPA) said that Bayer Healthcare had violated the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry Code of Conduct (ABPI Code). The Code sets rules on …
Hope the homoeopathy and aromatherapy work for you when you get something serious.
You do realise that every traditional remedy has been extensively tested and those that work have been labelled 'medicine', everything else is just snake oil and that has been proven many times over.
"The Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority (PMCPA)"
Who are these guys and what are they doing for whom and why?
"The company also breached a rule that prohibits companies releasing information about prescription-only medicines that would encourage the public to ask their doctor for the product."
Why does such a rule exist? Do the blinders need to be kept on them good horses? Is somebody afraid of consumers?
"...where companies bring discredit upon and reduce confidence in the pharmaceutical industry..."
What does that even mean? What or who comprises the "pharmaceutical industry"? Why doesn't said company just bring discredit upon itself? Why should people have "confidence in the pharmaceutical industry" in in the first place??!?
It smacks of cartel logic trying to protect some turf, really.
It's so that consumers don't get bombarded with the sort of crap they do in the US. If I "asked my doctor" about every prescription drug which I see advertised and which I somehow believed might possibly help me, I'd be on more medications than I could count and my entire paycheck would go straight to Big Pharmaceuticals (presumably to pay for more advertising).
It's comical, watching how they try to make these ads memorable while having to list the assorted nasty side-effects. But it must work, or they wouldn't bother.
I've sat in a doctor's waiting room where the patients and staff combined were outnumbered by drug company sales reps.
It's a big racket, designed to get as many people as possible on as many drugs as possible, to make as much money as possible. As far as I can see the biggest difference between their behavior and that of your local scumbag drug pusher is that the shady blingy dude on the corner isn't allowed to advertise his wares during the evening news broadcast.
That's why the PMCPA exists, to keep that slippery slope fenced off.
Because:
Ignorant people are demanding drugs that cost way more than other equally good treatments.
Are demanding advertised drugs that are less effective that other treatments.
Or worst yet, people are convincing themselves that because they have symptoms mentioned in advertisements that they have a different illness to the one diagnosed and subsequently refuse to take the correct prescribed medication.
When I stayed in America for one month the amount of advertising for prescription medication extremely disturbing.
The only thing more disturbing was an American colleague listing all the prescription medication her 7 year old son was on, usually for symptoms that at the root Brits would call "Being a typical 7 year old".
I am glad Blighty has rules like this.
i love the most is when the voice over reads out the list of side effects really quickly, and one of them is almost always death.
Its also a different attitude to health over there.
Here we go to the doctor, the doctor has a think and prescribes something.
In the US, you go to the doctor, tell them the problem, tell them what you want done and complain if the doctor disagrees.
"i love the most is when the voice over reads out the list of side effects really quickly, and one of them is almost always death.
Its also a different attitude to health over there.
Here we go to the doctor, the doctor has a think and prescribes something.
In the US, you go to the doctor, tell them the problem, tell them what you want done and complain if the doctor disagrees."
It's getting like America over here now. Every doctor has a story about some neurotic woman (and it's usually women) bringing in a printout about some random disease she has read about on the internet - clinical depression, fibromyalgia, carpal tunnel syndrome and other 'chick crap' illnesses.
wow, did I fall through a black hole into 1863?
damn that protective parental instinct, it's not like it's ever done the human race any good. Well, it probably did result in the survival of James139, which could be argued to be an overall negative.
it's pretty usual for parents to be protective of their children, and most of us should probably be thankful for that. It's equally a good idea for there to be rules in place to ensure the pharmaceutical industry doesn't exploit this instinct to worrying ends. As others have pointed out, the U.S. model probably isn't a great one. But I for one find it pretty offensive for you to start blaming parents for caring about their children...
...I'm shocked -- SHOCKED -- to discover that pharmaceutical corporations are shilling for their products on Twitter!
@Anonymous Coward at 09:58gmt on 08.22.11:
You think one month was bad? Try being an actual American who's spent the past ten or fifteen years being pummelled with "ask you doctor about..." TV commercials for prescription medications, many for obscure three-letter-abbreviated ailments we didn't even know existed until those commercials hit the air.
The "ask your doctor" prescription med commercials are basically the grown-ups' version of commercials directed at children urging them to pester their parents to buy them This Year's Hot New Toy for Christmas.
Big Pharma is also a boon for lawyers. I've noticed that many of the drugs being pushed on TV 4-5 years ago (I'm from Canada and get most of my TV from the US) are now being recalled for serious side-effects. I can think of a few big ones: Lipitor, Celexa (and a whole host of other anti-depressants) and Propecia. All of these have been pulled from the market and are involved with class-action lawsuits.
It makes one wonder if the idea is to sicken people on purpose to sell them more drugs later on.
Etropiated sez on 08.22.11 @20:38gmt:
"Big Pharma is also a boon for lawyers. I've noticed that many of the drugs being pushed on TV 4-5 years ago (I'm from Canada and get most of my TV from the US) are now being recalled for serious side-effects. I can think of a few big ones: Lipitor, Celexa (and a whole host of other anti-depressants) and Propecia. All of these have been pulled from the market and are involved with class-action lawsuits..."
My wife has had rheumatoid arthritis since she was a young girl; and when Vioxx came out about ten or twelve years ago, it was a boon to her -- until it was discovered that the stuff was causing heart attacks and was recalled. She still gets around OK, but has to "ration" the amount of physical things she does, like gardening or dancing, in combination with regular cortisone shots from the doctor, and Aleve (over-the-counter stuff).
I didn't know USA telly did adverts like that - I guess I have to get out more. Anyway - in the UK I've seen people try to raise awareness of a new treatment option because it's too expensive for the NHS so they probably don't talk about it much? A different side to the argument if you're ill and don't want to be? I suspect the interwebs wins again:- Wiki any drug or treatment for research and if you really want to put in some effort, you could even try Google.
Using a computer program, scientists analyzed 5,600 drug labels
and more than 500,000 labeled effects.
They found that the average drug comes with a list of 70 potential reactions,..
In fact, the more commonly prescribed drugs averaged around 100 side effects each,
with some drugs containing as many as 525 listed reactions.
http://healthimpactnews.com/2011/antidepressant-drugs-have-100-to-525-side-effects/
...is seeing all these prescription antidepressants advertised on TV -- there's even one out now called "Soma", f'crissakes -- in which the ads state that "depression _may_ be caused by a chemical imbalance" ("may" being the operative word here), and then go on to list side-effects which include "thoughts of suicide". What's worse is how the manufacturers of antidepressants fought tooth'n'nail to prevent the requirement of "black box" warnings on antidepressant packaging.
I'll stick to treating my depression with marijuana, thanks very much.
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