Enzyte Bob at any normal time is creepy and wrong. Enzyte Bob when you’re suffering from an allergy attack that cannot be treated makes me a very angry Evil indeed.
We had all this time and money spent on Enzyte and Viagra, while all the food-allergy people suffered through minefields of food, worrying whether someone had cross-contaminated their food, and getting violently ill when it did happen. I spent my entire life bringing Tupperware to restaurants because you cannot avoid onion and garlic in an entree no matter how hard you try. I make most of my own food, but was stuck on Monday. So I got one of the very few campus foods that I can eat- a grilled chicken filet.
Curse you, whoever fished out an onion ring once with the tongs you used to make my sandwich! There are reasons for those health department guidelines.
And curse you, companies who have yet to come up with some pill to put off or stop food allergy reactions! While you worked on giving guys boners, we got violently ill and some of us even died from reactions. It is rather infuriating to see you triumphing over Enzyte when I am trying to keep my stomach from jumping outside my body.
The food-allergy people would someday like a normal life. Try to help give it to us.
I’d like to second that. I’m allergic to fish and nuts (I can eat tuna and almonds, for reasons that elude me, and can occasionally get away with sardines if properly prepared, but aside from those species that are normally found in a can, consumption of icthyan life forms is potentally deadly for me.)
I have on a couple of occasions had pretty nasty reactions from eating chicken or some other food that had been fried in the same oil with fish. As I get older, I find that i’m becoming less sensitive to these things, so if my chicken was fried alongside someone else’s halibut I’ll at worst have some mild irritation around th mouth, but for a child with allergies, this is a situation that could land them in the ER, or worse.
Of course, when dealing with pharmaceutical companies, the profit motive conquers all. Some marketing genius probably figured out that the people with potentially deadly food allergies would constitute a fairly small portion of the drug buying market compared with guys who can’t get a hard-on on command, so making drugs like Viagra are more cost effective.
They weren’t working on giving guys boners. They were working on treating angina for heart patients.
“By I994, Nicholas Terrett and colleague Peter Ellis discovered during the trial studies of Sildenafil as a heart medicine, that it also increased blood flow to the penis, allowing men to reverse erectile dysfunctions. The drug acts by enhancing the smooth muscle relaxant effects of nitric oxide, a chemical that is normally released in response to sexual stimulation. The smooth muscle relaxation allows increased blood flow into the penis leading to an erection when combined with something naughty. Dunn and Wood then worked on the crucial nine-step process to synthesize a sildenafil (Viagra) compound into a pill. It was approved by the FDA on March 27, 1998, as the first pill to treat impotence.”
Now that’s a side effect… my original point still stands, though. They have the technology and knowledge to make all the drugs they have, they should be able to tackle food allergies.
Also, Thea, tuna is an interesting monster. I can’t have most brands of canned tuna (in water), because they feel the need to put the most minscule amount of vegetable broth in the can. It is odd, however, that you can eat that fish but no other. Maybe a particular chemical? It’s the chemical that gives that particular onion/garlic flavor that sets me off, we think.
Yup, it may look like a pharmaceutical company ad, but if you watch and listen carefully, you’ll notice differences between it and other ads. No mention of side effects, no “talk to your doctor”, different fine print. “Supplements” do not have to undergo the same testing as medications do, so take care in what pills you swallow.
First off, let’s remember that Enzyte is not a drug.
Second, I’m sorry that you suffer from food allergies. They can be a bitch. The fact that there are other medical conditions that exist don’t make the allergies any less of a pain. They also don’t make those other medical conditions, though, less worthy of treatment.
Until Viagra, men who suffered from impotence were often completely out of luck. This was a terrible burden on them and their partners, and caused many to waste millions of dollars on questionable cures like the aforementioned Enzyte.
I never thought I’d be shilling for Big Pharm, but here goes:
It takes millions of dollars and approx. ten years to develop and gain approval for a new drug. Only one out of ten new drugs make it all the way through this process. So when a big money-maker like Viagra, or Enzyte (aka “Geritol for your dick”) comes out, it can give the pharmaceutical company the money they need to develop anitiallergy agents.
Only they don’t develop antiallergy agents. They put that money into things that would make them even more money, like Viagra or anti-insanity drugs. These are the same people trying to stop AIDS medication knockoffs so that they can charge people in Africa thousands of dollars a pop to stay alive.
Don’t pretend that they are humanitarians when they are really money-grubbing bastards.
Huh. Remember that next time you get admitted to the hospital. Be sure and refuse all meds! After all, you wouldn’t want to give money to the bastards. Please. :rolleyes:
Your information is not correct, as is noted in the posts above. Drugs like Viagara aren’t developed specifically to treat conditions like eretile disfunction, it’s generally a side effect from the drug treating some other condition. It’s then used to treat the other condition. Get your facts straight.
A little poking around on google suggests there’s definitely research being done into preventing food allergy reactions. Medical research does take a long time, from identifying possible drug candidates through to regulatory approval processes. I’m sorry there isn’t anything on the market now, but it’s not that no one is looking at the problem (as far as I can see. That was some pretty cursory research on my part ) Hopefully there’ll be good news on this front soon.
How companies choose target clinical areas is definitely complicated, and very definitely includes calculations about profit. Drug development is expensive, and a lot of small companies go out of business before ever bringing a drug to market, but that doesn’t mean I give pharmaceutical companies a total pass on drug pricing issues and such - just that I don’t think it’s a particularly black and white situation.
When I was unemployed, Eli Lilly gave me my ADD med, Straterra, which cost over $250-$300 per month, for free. They also give away Prozac to low income people. The firm has to stay in business. But to assert that they are cold-blooded is simply…well, it is simply boneheaded.
I work in a pharmacy. I’ve worked in hospital, research, nursing home, and retail pharmacy. I understand the plight of the OP.
Pharmaceutical companies are gigantic, money-grubbing bastards. I can tell you this with a straight face, because I’ve seen the amount of research that has to go into developing new drugs. You’d be a money-grubbing bastard, too, if you had the potential to develp a drug to help people out, and you had to shell out millions just to get it tested and passed by the FDA. I made good money working in research pharmacy, but there’s also an extensive amount of work that goes into getting a drug accepted.
Also, I work with a psychiatric hospital here in Baltimore. They provide medication to indigent people and to people on low to below poverty level incomes who desperately need psychiatric medication. Some of our patients’ medication can cost upwards of $4-5K a month. And most of it comes to us to be repackaged free of charge from the drug company through a patient assistance program. Yes, they can probably write off this amount, and I’m sure they do, but at least they’re making an effort .
As for allergy patients, do you have an epinephrine pen? That is one of the most amazing things invented for allergy patients, IMHO. I used to carry one with me due to a bizarre food allergy. Anything that can get my heart back on track, keep me from blowing up and get my breathing back in gear is well worth its weight in gold for its convenience and reliability. (And yes, I’ve had to use it on 2 occasions.)
You’re off by a few thousand factors of ten, depending on when you want to start counting the years. And since you suggest ten (rather than the more common five), I’d have to say you’re off by more than a few thousand factors of ten. They can make drugs by the millions day in and day out. Can’t test them that fast though.
I thought I’d bump this to post a link to an informative little article on the matter for interested parties. Please take their numbers with a grain of salt. It is quite difficult to estimate the resources put to any particular drug. For example,
This is somewhat misleading. Multiple targets are sought at any particular time, and tests are done as parallel as possible. Furthermore, what failed in one instance might yet come out as a drug, depending on reformulating the drug with different binders etc (IIRC Novartis is one company that does a lot of this kind of work, but I might have the company name wrong), so it is hard to say that this number is accurate in any real (i.e.- objective) sense. But it does paint a good picture of what resources have to be available to seek new drugs (i.e.- in an accounting sense).
Of particular note is this paragraph:
Some people might remember me tooting this horn in other threads. Market idealists like to think that the big pharmas need to charge so much to recoup their research costs. This is not empirically correct. They need their money because they are a company who wants money.
If you and I were in the same room right now, I’d introduce you to the Hip Separator. If they have to collect shit-loads of cash to bring drugs to market, and if they give away even huge buttloads of drugs to the poor, they are not, under any circumatances, money-grubbing bastards.
Not true. Market idealists…oh, wait. I forgot, people who advocate the free market generally have no idea what they’re talking about. Optimal pricing is optimal pricing, no matter what any free-marketeer, Chumpsky, or Pervert has to say about it.
) Hopefully there’ll be good news on this front soon.