So do any other Americans think that drug company ads should be blocked from the air? Personally, I’m a little conflicted–on the one hand I think we should be able to market anything we want, as in a truly free market (i.e. so not what we have now) we would be allowed to. But on the other these ads are the result of unfree business practices (not allowing drug price negotiations) and if the system was set up differently the ads would probably not even exist. I’m still thinking about how I feel about this issue.
Your illustrations show why people prefer taking drugs, but not why others are averse to them. Consider BP, where you suggest curbing salt intake. So you have primarily two options: decrease salt or add pill. Both are permanent regimes. You can’t cut salt for just 3 weeks, but or take the pill for 3 weeks if you maintain salt intake. Why is the former solution preferable? The “underlying problem” isn’t too much salt, but too much salt in the context of no modulating factors. The introduction of the pill changes the context, where the same salt intake isn’t associated with high BP. If the pill introduces side-effects, then that’s a matter of case-by-case evaluation, but I’m just arguing about the general philosophy.
RLS sufferer chiming in here. RLS is no pop disease. It’s finally getting a lot of publicity - partly because of the newly-approved medication (not a new med, it’s just the first one that has been formally approved for RLS in the US - it’s been used off-label for this condition for years). Your mother may have known about RLS since the 80s but a lot of people didn’t - and have been given wildly inaccurate diagnoses and inappropriate, ineffective and counterproductive treatments. The author of the article in question clearly knows nothing about RLS beyond the name of the syndrome - he has no clue how debilitating it can be. So I’m all for anything that publicizes this condition and the fact that there really are valid treatments - if I hadn’t stumbled across a description of it myself a few years back, I’d still think I was losing my mind.
I can’t comment too much on the other conditions mentioned in the article. ADHD is a frequent target for accusations of overdiagnosis but I once read (no cite handy, sorry) that nobody’s ever been able to prove that it’s being overmedicated. Toenail fungus? OK, as far as I can tell it’s more of a cosmetic problem / annoyance than a major problem, but I freely admit I know very little about it. Menopause? Well, I’d have to agree with the article that there’s been a tendency to medicalize a perfectly normal life process. Still, it’s good that there are medical options there for when that normal process is more hellish than the average.
Mild problems of IBS?? These report authors must know nothing. There are some minor side effects of IBS…but it is also a painful, sometimes cripplingly painful condition to live with. I’d like to see one of them have to spend multiple days in bed because it hurts too much to even move and then rewrite that.
But the pill costs money, both for the patient to buy and for the manufacturer to make. It expends resources to produce as well. So ingesting the pill causes more “damage” and “benefit” to, respectively, your pocketbook and the pharmaceutical industry. The taking-away of salt, at the most, causes an infinitesmal dip in the proceeds of the salt industry. So the pill is more of a change in the status quo than is the diet change.
Besides which, you will never have a side-effect-free pill that does not build up in the system at all. Taking myriad pills for a number of ailments is going to come back to bite you (general you) in the ass someday. We live in the real world where there are real consequences.
Anecdotal evidence only, but my best friend’s father is a GP, and he complains about all the idiot patients asking for some brand-name medicine that doesn’t even remotely relate to any health problem they have. If they saw it on the telly, it’s got to be true. It’s often hard to convince them that they don’t need the prescription of the week.
He also mentioned that a surprising number of people choose name brand drugs over generics, even when he points out that they are the exact same chemicals, but one of them comes in green with a pretty logo and costs 3 times as much.
Well there are certainly some charmers among the male population who want to make women feel shame about their bodies, but ISTM that it’s females who are mainly responsible for other women (or themselves) not being in touch with their feelings and bodies. I don’t understand it either but it seems to be related to jealousy, egoistic normalization (i.e. a woman with a naturally low sex drive thinks those with a large sex drive are sluts,) and yes, normalization from a patriarchal society, in that order.
If it were a matriarchal society rather than a male-dominated or equal society, putting down women based on their sex drive would be worse than today, not better, as some women try to make up excuses to deny other women their desires.
Granted, the quality of these womanogenic repressions is not as high as those with a patriarchogenic origin, (e.g. guilt over sexual assault,) but it happens far more frequently.
If people choose to medicate rather than change lifestyle, why should that “make you sick?” Disagree with their choices, by all means, but why disgust you? Why is it a moral issue at all?
And congratulations on the magnificence that makes you so able to change your life so readily, and so willing to do so rather than to pollute your body. Does that make you a more self-disciplined person than most? Maybe (or maybe a very healthy lifestyle is simply more to your taste anyway). But your vehemence on the topic makes you someone I personally would never want to meet! I’ll take the unself-disciplined over the mightily self-righteous any day!
I hear people talk about all these “kickbacks”, but I never seem to get on the good end of it. All I get are crappy pens and note pads and the occasional nice dinner (for me only–not my wife), consumed while listening to a really dull talk. I only use their pens in a pinch, I buy my own post-its, and while I admit that I took advantage of the dinners in residency to eat at places I couldn’t afford, these days I can buy my own steak and eat it in peace, thanks.
The days of doctors being sent on expensive vacations or getting other valuable kickbacks from drug companies are long over. There are very strict rules in place now to prevent quid pro quo.
To be fair, I’m sure that drug company cash flows a little more freely when it comes to research studies and the like. The point is that the rank-and-file internist (like me) isn’t getting much from the pharmas.
Sure, if everyone ate right and lived right, they wouldn’t need medicines. And if we’d all just be open and honest with one another, we wouldn’t need lawyers. And if people wouldn’t steal from one another, we wouldn’t need cops. And if my aunt had testicles, she’d be my uncle.
That’s assuming that what you say is true, and it isn’t. Studies often test medications against lifestyle changes alone, and we find that the meds work better. For instance, even the strictest lifestyle changes make only a modest change in cholesterol levels, while the effect from statins can be quite dramatic.
Medicines are not a replacement for lifestyle changes, or vice versa–they are both tools for maximizing one’s life and well-being. That people underuse one and overuse the other doesn’t automatically mean one is good and one is bad.
I was just popping in to say the same thing. For a condition that can drastically change your lifestyle, IBS is not well understood at all.
The way I explain it to those not in the know is that normal ‘upset stomach’ is to IBS as mild headache is to severe migraine (in many cases.)
A posted message from an RLS group guided me to the article in the Times denouncing several conditions as having been made up for drug profits, as well as to this site to reply, as they had. As to the other conditions mentioned in the article, I cannot speak from personal experience, however, as to RLS: I spent years wondering what the intense, extremely uncomfortable, practically impossible-to-describe sensations were, why they were now ruining my well-being and my life when I hadn’t experienced them previously except one night only 20 yrs earlier in the last month of my pregnancy (my ob/gyn figured late pregnancy fetus taking up space as is common knowledge, it only follows there could be pressure on a nerve, which makes sense), never before that & never after that till 20 yrs later. It couldn’t be real, right? Well it was real and kept coming no matter what I may do, & w/increasing frequency which quickly became everyday, would force me to pace & move arms & shoulders in vain attempts to relieve what feels like harrowing electricity from any & all areas of my body, especially when fatigued or exhausted, desperate for rest. Car & bus rides & airplane flights posed quite a sticky situation @ best, or @ worst, agony. This had not otherwise been a part of my life, & there’s no way I could have made it up on any level, how could I come up with such an idea? Only when my attention was unexpectedly drawn to others going through what I was did I find I wasn’t alone, consult a neurologist, who prescribed Sinemet (later recommended to combine w/Mirapex). That neurologist gave me a way to get some relief—something I’d not had in several years nor ever thought possible. Whoever thinks this is made up truly ought to check and research, do their homework before presenting their opinion as though it were fact in a paper which is suppossed to be known for responsible journalism. I’ve read messages as to RLS but this is the first time I’ve ever felt compelled to post something, I found the article outrageous. Would the journalists please consult the medical community, and specifically neurology, get more than one opinion, and exercise a modicum of responsibility. Thank you :mad:
Sorry, I just can’t read any post that is printed in pink or rose.
I had a problem with a “restless leg” about twenty years ago. I had never heard of anyone else having a problem with it. It was only my left leg and it bothered me only when I was try to go to sleep. The problem continued for about six months. When I began taking medication for depression, the problem stopped.
Keep in mind that sadness is only one of the symptoms of depression though. The label depression has been around for a long time, but it is really very misleading.
I know a couple of people who are in a lot of pain from irritable bowel syndrome. One of them is 93 and neither of them are sissies. I wonder how someone else judges that their problems are exaggerated.
That same 93 year old woman is at least four inches shorter than she used to be and more stooped. Her neck hurts her quite a bit. One of her daughters has spinal problems and the other daughter has neck problems. All three have osteoporosis. If it’s not a disease, what is it? Their bones are thinning. Shrinking elderly women is nothing new.
One thing I have trouble with is the moving targets. If you have been around for a while, you can remember when 240 was an acceptable cholesterol number, then 220, then 200, and now my doctor can look at me, who has a total cholesterol of 164 and a LDL/HDL ratio of 2.7, and say, “we have to keep an eye on this”. The pharmaceutical companies won’t be happy until everyone in North America is on statins.
Some of it is preventive malpractice insurance. If someone pitches a coronary with a total cholesterol of 210, and there are guidelines saying 200 is the high limit, then the doctor might get sued for failure to treat the “condition”.
Not a cardiologist? I just say that because I go to the meetings, and the lines for free stuff (textbooks, dinners, product samples, models, posters, and, yes, occasionally junkets) go way out the door. It all seems to be big pharma doling out the goodies, and a terrible waste, IMO, but I don’t see a lot of restriction on inducements, and it hasn’t changed in the seven or so years I’ve been in this sphere. If anything, it’s gotten worse.
Sure we do, but does the research support this? To me it looks like since the statin drugs were developed we have a new tool to reduce cholesterol, and everyone’s running around looking for someone to give it to. If you have a brand new hammer, pretty much everything looks like a nail.