New Zealand also allows advertising to the consumer of prescription drugs, but because of the state funding of prescription drugs, it will cost me $3 for each prescription, at least for ‘funded’ drugs.
If they aren’t on the list of funded drugs, then cost could be totally unaffordable. e.g. herceptin, cost about $NZ7000 for 500mg which is the initial dose, about $NZ5200 for 370mg, the maintenance dose, now funded for a 12 month course, total cost of which used to be approx $NZ100,000, paid by the individual.
I haven’t seen any of those in a while where they say nothing about the benefits, but those are per FDA rules - if you give any good effects, you must also list the side effects. If you don’t say what it’s for, no need to list the downside. Viagra tends to be one of those drugs that may still have commercials like that, as everyone knows what that’s for!
What I really like is the ones that not only state Ask your doctor, but also state, “Go to our website, and we’ll give you a list of doctors who’d be more than happy to prescribe these drugs to you!”.
The latest one to do this is a prescription medication is for women who have short eye lashes.
And your number of 10 - 100 is only including drugs that actually make it to testing. With combinatorial methods the number of drugs tested for various activity literally numbers in the millions per drug that actually comes out. Of course it is largely automated high-throughput screening, but every one of those compounds has to be synthesized. Even with combinatorial methods, how many PhD’s do you suppose it takes to make a million compounds worth testing for a single condition?