70% of drugs advertised on TV are less effective than others on the market

[thewayne]

They are described as being of "low therapeutic value", i.e., less effective. So basically the drug companies are trying to sucker you into brow-beating your doctor into prescribing stuff that you saw on TV - which is going to be non-generic and much more expensive - and it is likely to be less effective than other drugs on the market.

Yeah.

So what we've got here is the pharma industry KNOWING that the drug isn't very effective, but they figure that if they put a lot of money into advertising on TV and in magazines that they can shift enough units to work towards recovering costs before the doctors find out it's less effective and start saying "No, I will not prescribe that. Here are more effective alternatives for that condition."

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/01/most-prescription-drugs-advertised-on-tv-are-of-low-benefit-study-finds/

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/01/18/2122237/70-of-drugs-advertised-on-tv-are-of-low-therapeutic-value-study-finds

EDIT: I forgot to mention that there are only two countries IN THE WORLD that allow such advertising of drugs: the USA and New Zealand! How the Kiwis were suckered into doing this, I do not know. But as chained to corporate profits as we are, I don't think this will ever change. For me, this is one of the reasons why the mute button on the remote was invented: if I can't skip the commercial, at least I can silence it.

Comments

[silveradept]

They're also advertising to the doctors to prescribe the stuff with things that would probably be called bribery, but for the fact that we're in the Capitalist Hellscape. I'm not surprised, however, that the mediocre stuff gets direct-marketed to try and recoup the costs that go into making these particular failures.

[thewayne]

It used to be that they'd just write-off less than successful drugs, and hope that it might be found to be useful for another condition down the line (thalidomide being used for leprosy, etc).  Now we can just go ahead and sell them to stupid people!

[silveradept]

For many things in medicine, we're all stupid people, and I suspect some of that is because of the fuckery that goes on with private insurance companies and their arbitrariness. You shouldn't have to learn more than your doctor just to ensure you get proper care.

[thewayne]

Yeah, insurance fuckery is a constant bane.  I just received a bill for a variety of bloodwork that my wife had done over TWO YEARS AGO!  This hospital is a constant thorn in our side, even though we stopped doing business with them over a year ago.  She paid $200 for the work then, and now they want another $400 or so! I'm planning on getting a copy of their chargemaster at that time to confirm that they're not reassessing the bill at current rates.