[QUOTE=threemae]
I think that the bioethicist in the NPR story expressed exactly what I’ve been arguing over the thread and I won’t rehash what I’ve said before, but I’ll leave with one question: do you take Pfizer for a bunch of fools? Or do you think that Pfizer might be just the type of people capable of teasing out the subtle effects of a given intervention on a large population? So, can we pretend that this advertisement will only serve as an inducement for people to talk with their doctors about cholesterol, or will it simply change prescribing and purchasing behavior towards Lipitor compared to what the baseline marketshare of Lipitor with physicians and patients making decisions solely upon the science.
I’m going to guess the later.
[/QUOTE]
As I read through this thread, it became more and more clear that those of you complaining about Jarvik have missed the boat completely.
You should be pitting the makers of prescription drugs for advertising their products, or Congress for allowing them to do so. The whole idea of advertising prescription medication is ludicrous, given that the desired effect (presumably) is to have hordes of patients asking their doctors to prescribe Monistat or Lipitor or Norvasc or Advair or Cialis or whatever the fuck they think they need for whatever the hell they think they’ve got.
Instead, you choose to focus on Dr. Jarvik, who anyone with half a brain would agree has done more than perhaps one or two people to advance the development of the artificial heart.
When I was a kid, my school supplies were generally provided free of charge by pharmaceutical companies - my mother being an anaesthetist and later a GP, and dad being an orthopaedic surgeon. All the assorted pens and such were the sum total of the advertising for prescription drugs I was exposed to as a child, having grown up in Britain. I thought it was ridiculous then, and the older I got, the more I realized I was right.
Slight hijack - Once, I asked my mother why companies gave her all those pens and notepads and letter openers and calculators and clocks and stress balls and other assorted plastic tat. “So that I’ll consider prescribing their drugs,” she said. For an eight-year-old, I had a remarkable familiarity with prescription drugs and their uses, since there was never anything to read in the house (aside from car magazines) except Merck Manuals and entire cupboards full of the British Medical Journal. So, I asked why she’d consider one rheumatism drug over another when they were both giving her free pens. “I wouldn’t,” she said, “because their pens are shitty anyway.”
She didn’t really say that. But I often wish she had.
