what are your thoughts on the pharmacutical industry

[tj]

There is alot of debate over how much power the pharmacy industry has on our lives.

 

[Francisco d'Anconia]

Is it the pharmaceutical industry or is it our dependence on drugs that has the power?

 

[ketostix]

Well they work hard to make people trust and depend on drugs, they lobby the gov. etc. One thing is, just like healthcare, Pharmacueticals are mostly paid for by insurance so the cost escalates and everyone with insurance or taxpayer is paying even if they're not the one running to the Dr. and getting prescriptions. It's a transfer of wealth from a large group to another smaller group. Good for healthcare industry and not so good for the rest of the population. We all know how much physicians make but pharmacist typicall earn over 100K/year now. Although supposedly we have better healthcare but thats' debateable.

 

[Maxtro]

SiCKO

Here's to hoping that the next President can change something. I haven't seen a doctor or a dentist in about 4 years. I've been going to Jr. College full time been working part-time off and on while trying to pay off my debt.

 

[Bible_Belt]

Medical mistakes combined with deaths from legal rx drugs make up the leading cause of death. Legal drugs kill a lot more people than illegal drugs every year.

I think the system is fvcked. Doctors are just pill pushers these days. Corporate profits are great for the economy, but they became priority nnumber one some time ago, and now the system has suffered. Most of medicine is now pushing pills, and then more pills to fight the side effects of the first pills.

I've also seen rx pain meds destroy a lot more people than illegal drugs. People get injured and have a legit rx, then their tolerance builds and they keep taking more. Then they start doctor shopping and getting more than their prescribed amount. Within the last year, I personally know multiple people dead, crippled, or in jail because legal rx pain killers. No sh!t.

 

[Francisco d'Anconia]

Well they work hard to make people trust and depend on drugs, they lobby the gov. etc...

People are weak. Remember when drugs were just used to mask the symptoms of illnesses? Now there are drugs for people to just to endure a five day workweek.

Blame the government or corporations all you want. The fact is that corporations are just filling a need just like a dope dealer on the street. If the "want" wasn't there (disguised as a "need"), the corporations would market something else. People are just looking for a "blue pill" in order to cope.

 

[Deep Dish]

Others have spoken about greed. I will agree pharmaceutical companies are greedy and have been known to maintain drug prices at artificially high prices afer paying off cost of development, and do their best to obstruct competing generic drugs from succeeding in the market, but that is where my agreement ends.

There is the perennial attitude by the general populace that doctors and Big Pharma are "making you sick;" that they have no interest in your health, which only goes against their bottom line. That they suppress "natural cures" or inhibit cancer breakthroughs, for instance, which would only prompt them to file for bankruptcy. Think the pitch by scamster Kevin Trudeau of Natural Cures THEY Don't Want You To Know About. Many people die every year seeking—bogus or flimsy—alternative medicine "therapies" rather than conventional medicine. There is also the perennial attitude doctors invent fictional diseases.

I disagree.

The fact is our sense of normal health is an unnatural position. Throughout human history and encompassing the entire Animal Kingdom, disease and dysfunction are lions of the jungle, nature's balance of keeping species populations in check. We happen to be in the unique position of subverting nature and living longer and more optimally healthy lives than we ought to be; after all, chances are you are supposed to be dead. So, it's not as if doctors and Big Pharma have "gone out of whack" by needlessly creating diagnostic criteria and an unnecessary dependence on drugs; but rather responded to the existential reality the human body is so vulnerable and prone to flaw. An estimated twenty percent of people have some form of mental illness, only ten percent of those ever seek treatment, which illuminates not the byproduct of a medical conspiracy but the myriad of ways the imperfect process of genetic sequencing can run awry. A large portion of cynicism against medicine is precisely because the drugs work too well; antidepressants work so well that otherwise depressed people then say "Pff, I don't need this stuff."

The cynical perspective of "It's all greed" can be taken for practically any issue. Cynicism does not necessarily equate with insight.

 

[Falcon]

"If the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the People of all their Property until their Children will wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered."
-Thomas Jefferson

Things like the medical-industrial complex and the military-industrial complex are all just symptoms of the greater underlying problem. Until this problem is addressed (the federal reserve), there will be a continuation of this legal plunder until the law is so perverted that we will be powerless as citizens. It may take a hundred more years, or it may take a couple for this to be. It all depends upon how much we are willing to fight it.

 

[TheHumanist]

Cynicism does not necessarily equate with insight.

I found my signature.

 

[Morphiex]

Personally i think the problem lies within self medication. people are so affected by achieving a simple carefree life , that they let them surrender to the tv comercials that tell them all the stuff that is wrong with them.

Instead of people with stress taking a break settling down and relaxing rather pop pills for the fast effect. People with stomach problems taking pills instead of starting to eat healthy. Issues where no medication is required are replaced by the stupidity of tv and twists the mind of many. Angry or depressed or hyper children who pherhaps need someone to talk to are forcedfed antidepressents just so the people arround them can work effectivly.

these days you see so many marketing ads everywhere telling you how much easier medication will make your life , "dont change just take the pills to make it easier"

Also i can agree with some of deep dish`s points , there are some lunatics out there who think that vacsination of their newborns is unneccesary.

 

[Rhoto]

It doesn't seem like the Pharmaceuticals are getting enough credit my book. We've gotten to a point where symptoms that we've never had from diseases we've never heard of are flaring up and a demand for a treatment is there. and X-Brand, Z-Brand, can help you. Talk to your doctor about X-Brand.

Brilliant marketing. These companies, along with make up and dermatology companies are essentially selling youth and health back to a populace that has money to spend on it. There is a treatment for pretty much every thing, even restless leg syndrome.

But then again, how many guys have gotten action because of Viagra? Or lived because of Lipitor, or got rid of a cold sore because of plavix? (All off the top of my head). These companies aren't just out to take your money, they're just making natural selection work differently with the medicine they produce.

The Pharmaceutical industry: Research, development, testing and more research, development and testing. A profit driven welfare business.

However, I then ask you this: What service does a Medical Insurance Company provide? Why do they get such a big cut?

 

[Last Man Standing]

People are weak. Remember when drugs were just used to mask the symptoms of illnesses? Now there are drugs for people to just to endure a five day workweek.

Blame the government or corporations all you want. The fact is that corporations are just filling a need just like a dope dealer on the street. If the "want" wasn't there (disguised as a "need"), the corporations would market something else. People are just looking for a "blue pill" in order to cope.

Pharma is a scam!!! When you define everything as a disease then everyone is sick and needs a cure! Don't buy it!!

My teacher in grade school diagnosed me as having "Restless Leg Syndrome", because I constantly kicked her in the ass!!! Stupid chick!

 

[shop until I die!]

Pharma is a scam!!! When you define everything as a disease then everyone is sick and needs a cure! Don't buy it!!

My teacher in grade school diagnosed me as having "Restless Leg Syndrome", because I constantly kicked her in the ass!!! Stupid chick!

That can't be the only time you were diagnosed with something, can it?

 

[Phyzzle]

I dont give a sh1t, my father has been an executive at Glaxo Smithkleine for over 25 years, and because of his work for that company my mother my sister and I each drive a new Mercedes, live in a monster house in long island


I love the pharm industry it puts food on my table, gas in my benz, and paid for my 40K a year college then 30K a year Med Schooling.

You did not win any friends for Big Pharma with this post.

I do believe the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of unnecessary treatment and meds. Found an older post of mine:

The ADD diagnosis comes from the current economic structure of both parents working, or one parent missing. In addition to the "sit down and shut up" model of child education in our compulsory public schools.

Without a full-time caretaker, a child who would have been called "boisterous" in 1950 becomes an overwhelming burden. Frazzled parents or teachers demand a solution . . . and there aren't any multi-billion dollar corporations out there trying to market therapy.

Adderall is legalized meth. Maybe somewhat milder, but people who abuse it can get a little tweaker-ish.

(Some severe cases of ADHD may be real. There are some 5 year olders who keep breaking their bones because they go into rages where they can't feel pain, so they don't respond to punishment either.)

But Pharmaceutical companies are telling us that 10% of school age children are mentally ill to the point of needing to be medicated? WTF?

 

[Potbelly]

Pharma is a scam!!! When you define everything as a disease then everyone is sick and needs a cure! Don't buy it!!

My teacher in grade school diagnosed me as having "Restless Leg Syndrome", because I constantly kicked her in the ass!!! Stupid chick!

I'm perfectly fine with letting ignorant sick people that don't care to take care of themselves because they think "the man" is out to get them die.

I will try to help, but if they do not accept my offers, then the most I can do is watch them make idiotic choices and die.

So I don't give a damn if dumb people want to not take meds and just go die, but I do have a problem when they think it's somehow the right thing. Congratulations, you're bleeding out of your anus and your twisted principles are really going to stop the internal bleeding faster than our modern medicine.

 

[belividere]

Medical mistakes combined with deaths from legal rx drugs make up the leading cause of death. Legal drugs kill a lot more people than illegal drugs every year.

This is true. The numbers are skewed though. Almost every diagnosed person that dies in developed countries does so on legal drugs. Almost half of the cancer patients receiving chemo die as a result of strong doses of medication that kill off to many healthy (non-cancerous) cells. A good number of people have been dieing recently from drug coated stents that dont perform as well as anticipated. Deaths from legal drugs tend to be sensationalized compared to illegal drugs. If the cause of death is from a legal drug it gets properly documented and reported, if it from an illegal drug no one gives a **** and it doesn't even get noticed.

You did not win any friends for Big Pharma with this post.

I agree that the post was fcking lame. But what do you think that he would be driving if his father was an executive at 20th century? Probably a nicer car since hollywood generates more profits then pharmaceuticals each year. Maybe it is just me but I would rather a drug that prolonged my life instead of another cd from justin timberlake. That is unless I just had to live longer to deal with more bull**** mind control entertainment.

But Pharmaceutical companies are telling us that 10% of school age children are mentally ill to the point of needing to be medicated? WTF?

Ultimately this is where I think the problems have come from for big pharma in the past decade. I completely agree that the over-drugging of kids is wrong and unethical. These kids need a good whack in the face reality check and not a twice daily numbing pill. It is a lose-lose. But is the question really that of whether it is the pharmaceutical companies fault or the fault of insurance companies.

Pharma is a scam!!! When you define everything as a disease then everyone is sick and needs a cure! Don't buy it!!

Yeah and this is why people can eat like ****, sit on their asses all day, smoke, be morbidly obese (michael moore), and complain for 80 yrs about what kept them alive for the last 30.

For full disclosure I have just signed on to be a university paid researcher for cancer therapeutics. Whenever I tell people what I do they almost always get negative about how much drugs cost. I have nothing to do with it and really I get paid a little less then a union janitor. When you actually look at the numbers it takes to get a drug to market (research, development, FDA approval, and now fighting foreign IP and patent infringements) relative to how many potential drugs get billions of dollars pumped into the R&D only to fail, the cost of drugs is not really that expensive compared to other markets.

 

[Last Man Standing]

Also i can agree with some of deep dish`s points , there are some lunatics out there who think that vacsination of their newborns is unneccesary.

The only lunatic is the person who would inject mercury into their infants!!! Autism has skyrocketed to 1 in 146 babies - this is unbelievable!!!! Do research!!!

Deep Dish - Wake up The Matrix has you! Do you work for the Pharma industry?? 100% of those who say, "1 in 5 people have a mental illness", are mentally ill!!

Although 20% of Americans support Bush and all of them have a form of mental illness, this here is a lie and not an "estimate!"!............

An estimated twenty percent of people have some form of mental illness, only ten percent of those ever seek treatment, which illuminates not the byproduct of a medical conspiracy but the myriad of ways the imperfect process of genetic sequencing can run awry.

 

[spesmilitis]

The pharmaceutical industry has a lot of interaction with our government. I remember one republican jokenly stated that the 2004 national convention should named the 2004 pharma convention since they paid for just about everything and their ads were all over the place.

I have nothing against the pharmaceutical industry, they are just doing their best to be as successful as possible. I blame the corrupt politicians who let them influence government policy.

 

[Last Man Standing]

The pharmaceutical industry has a lot of interaction with our government. I remember one republican jokenly stated that the 2004 national convention should named the 2004 pharma convention since they paid for just about everything and their ads were all over the place.

I have nothing against the pharmaceutical industry, they are just doing their best to be as successful as possible. I blame the corrupt politicians who let them influence government policy.

They write the laws, in their area of interest, for our politicians!! What does this tell you??? This is not harmless profit making - it is an agenda!!!

 

[belividere]

The pharmaceutical industry has a lot of interaction with our government. I remember one republican jokenly stated that the 2004 national convention should named the 2004 pharma convention since they paid for just about everything and their ads were all over the place.

Out of curiosity what republican said that? If defense contracts were transparent in 2004 they would have been much more visible at the republican convention. When it comes down to cost/profit calculations pharma is pretty low.

Profits from defense contractors are at minimum 4'xs that of pharma right now, the entertainment industry (copyright laws) is estimated at twice that of pharma, financial firms net even higher profits, but the very drugs that prolong our lifes are attacked for making enough money to sustain and discover new cures?

Honestly can anyone here logically explain to me why pharma doesn't deserve to live by the same guides of capitalism that the rest of the world does?