Poll of the Day > If we suddenly banned prescription drug commercials, what do you think would

(+) Yeah! (+)

take their place?

When I occasionally watch some tv, it seems to be absolutely littered with them.

Phone or car commercials.

Infomercials, like the good old days. Time to buy the SlapChop3000 and some Ron Popeil spray-on hair in a can.

Also, we really need to do away with 1990s era network transmission rules so we can get back to having 30-minute toy commercial cartoon shows for kids. Best era ever.

Infomercials for random crap would be a huge improvement.

Seriously, can we ban drug commercials?

Prescription drug commercials shouldn't be a thing. I'm not a medical professional, it's not my job to suggest medication to my doctor for them to prescribe back to me, nor would it even be a good idea for anyone to do that.

faramir77 posted...

Prescription drug commercials shouldn't be a thing. I'm not a medical professional, it's not my job to suggest medication to my doctor for them to prescribe back to me, nor would it even be a good idea for anyone to do that.

The alternative is for drug companies to spend that marketing budget schmoozing doctors to convince them to try out their new drug. They already do that, but it would get quite a bit worse if they couldn't rely on commercials to get patients to ask doctors about the drugs.

In an ideal world, the paradigm of "patient learns about new drug --> patient asks doctor about new drug --> doctor says 'I don't know, I'll look into it' --> doctor researches new drug --> doctor makes recommendation to patient at next appointment based on findings and will consider new drug in future patient interactions where they feel it's appropriate" does actually work pretty well. Something has to be done to get the word out about new drugs (expecting doctors to proactively stay on top of the literature for every one that comes out isn't particularly feasible), and this approach means doctors are made aware of each new drug when it becomes relevant to a given patient's care.

In practice, though, patients have a tendency to not want to take no for an answer when they've already convinced themselves that this new drug they saw an ad for will help them, and doctors often don't have the time to book them in for multiple appointments to discuss the drug and assess its effects on them over time in a sort of miniature clinical trial. That can result in pressure to just give out the prescription, which can either result in prescribing it inappropriately or categorically refusing to consider new drugs, neither of which is ideal for patient care.

Whole body deodorant commercials

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Infomercials, like the good old days. Time to buy the SlapChop3000 and some Ron Popeil spray-on hair in a can.

Also, we really need to do away with 1990s era network transmission rules so we can get back to having 30-minute toy commercial cartoon shows for kids. Best era ever.

You're not getting that era back if kids aren't watching cable TV. And I'm not sure streaming will be guaranteed success either.

Car insurance ads I think would take the place of prescription ads if a ban theoretically happened. I'd rather ban car insurance ads and anything from the Ad Council.

All the rest of the commercials would pick up the slack probably, instead of 10 drug commercials and 10 car commercials, and 10 insurance commercials, etc. you would get 11 car commercials and 11 insurance commercials and 11 whatever else commercials.

Fast food commercials.

I don't know. Ads always seem to be for things I would never buy.
Far as I can tell ads are purposely designed to annoy you so you stop watching.

And I'm truely sick of impossible ads like, prescription drugs, you can't ask for these. Car insurance, it's mandated by law here to be a monopoly, you cannot switch, any alcohol commercials, any fragrance commercials make no fucking sense ever (why do they never say what they smell like?). And of course car commericals, which are extra insulting now because you have to prebuy a car sight unseen 3 years in advance now.
Also, lying in commercials is legal in Canada. So it's really bad. So hilariously bad you can see the same ad in America but with different numbers.
My favorite was when the Dodge dart was new, on Canada it hit 71mpg, in America it got 36mpg. Wonder which one is lying? Lol

Here's a fun one.
Canada version https://canadadry.ca/
America version https://www.canadadry.com/

Canada version lies and says made with real ginger. American version does not because they were sued when lab tests proved there was no ginger in it at all.

Damn, I didn't know advertising was even shittier in Canada. As for ads in general, I kind figure anything that can constantly afford to run national level commercials, is making too damn much money, so they should be avoided if possible.

Probably infomercial for selling ad space on the network.

adjl posted...

The alternative is for drug companies to spend that marketing budget schmoozing doctors to convince them to try out their new drug. They already do that, but it would get quite a bit worse if they couldn't rely on commercials to get patients to ask doctors about the drugs.

Yeah, was going to point out that this is the way worse issue.

When drug reps show up at your local doctor with free samples, lots of free junk like clocks and pens and posters and so on, and the person hired specifically to be as charismatic as possible directly interacts with the doctor, offering to take them out to lunch and answer questions, selling to them directly rather than the scattershot wide net of advertising to everyone and hoping someone is encouraged to "ask their doctor about", it's far more likely to compromise their objectivity.

Actual doctors will tell you they're often too busy to do their own research on a lot of different medications and all of the latest studies, and thus can absolutely be influenced into recommending brands they maybe shouldn't simply because the rep was really good at selling them on it.

In an ideal world, we'd probably be better off having some sort of independent organization devoted solely to doing the research on what medications are best for what conditions, what the side effects are, etc - and then publishing that information for doctors in an easy-to-digest way that keeps them up to date without requiring too much time for them to do their own research. And making it very, very illegal for any drug manufacturer to attempt to sell their product to this group or influence it in any way, meaning its findings will always represent the best data available at the moment and not simply act as further marketing for whichever major drug manufacturer manages to field the best sales team.

Sadly, we definitely don't live in an ideal world.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

drug reps

Oh, so it's like political lobbying, except with drugs instead of votes, doctors instead of members of the electoral college, and the doctors' clientele instead of the victimized and / or ignorant voter-base.

EclairReturns posted...

doctors instead of members of the electoral college

Congress and/or other other government officials rather than members of the electoral college, but otherwise accurate.

Members of the electoral college have exactly one job every four years and to be one the person cannot be an elected official or otherwise hold any office of trust or profit in the federal government.

Sorry, I can't always turn off the pedantic tendencies.

The drug commercials in Canada are interesting. They advertise the drug but they can't say what it's for. It's always like "Ask your doctor if this drug is right for you." Like I'm going to ask the doctor about some random drug when I don't even know what it's for.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

In an ideal world, we'd probably be better off having some sort of independent organization devoted solely to doing the research on what medications are best for what conditions, what the side effects are, etc - and then publishing that information for doctors in an easy-to-digest way that keeps them up to date without requiring too much time for them to do their own research. And making it very, very illegal for any drug manufacturer to attempt to sell their product to this group or influence it in any way, meaning its findings will always represent the best data available at the moment and not simply act as further marketing for whichever major drug manufacturer manages to field the best sales team.

Sadly, we definitely don't live in an ideal world.

The problem with that isn't even just not living in an ideal world (recognizing that, very obviously, there are very powerful competing interests that would want to compromise the objectivity of such an organization), it's just the nature of medicine in general. The human body is an unfathomably complex machine. Medical education explains in broad strokes how things work and how to fix them when they don't, but medical practice still consists of a whole lot of trial and error to see what actually works for a given patient's personal medical idiosyncrasies (which can be a product of their genetics, their home environment, their work, their medical history, their personality...). Just look at the whole concept of side effects: many of those effects are vanishingly rare, and in those cases, it's rare that anyone even knows why they happened except to be able to say that they happen very rarely.

Medicine isn't nearly as objective as people would like to think it is, so an independent body objectively laying out the pros and cons of a given drug isn't really possible even before getting into the human/corporate interest side of things.

Antbregante posted...

The drug commercials in Canada are interesting. They advertise the drug but they can't say what it's for. It's always like "Ask your doctor if this drug is right for you." Like I'm going to ask the doctor about some random drug when I don't even know what it's for.

Lol. Hey doc I heard about this persnatchafil when can I get it.
Sir i don't think you have a problem with vaginal odor.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

In an ideal world, we'd probably be better off having some sort of independent organization devoted solely to doing the research on what medications are best for what conditions, what the side effects are, etc - and then publishing that information for doctors in an easy-to-digest way that keeps them up to date without requiring too much time for them to do their own research. And making it very, very illegal for any drug manufacturer to attempt to sell their product to this group or influence it in any way, meaning its findings will always represent the best data available at the moment and not simply act as further marketing for whichever major drug manufacturer manages to field the best sales team.

Sadly, we definitely don't live in an ideal world.

As a slightly less ideal alternative, I'd suggest that drug company reps be permitted to send brochures or other literature to medical practices but be forbidden to meet them in person or send anything other than literature.

dragon504 posted...

Damn, I didn't know advertising was even shittier in Canada. As for ads in general, I kind figure anything that can constantly afford to run national level commercials, is making too damn much money, so they should be avoided if possible.

You'd be surprised at some of the PSA's that have aired in Canada. Some of the content they get away with it compared to other parts of the world.

Why would they get banned?

adjl posted...

The problem with that isn't even just not living in an ideal world (recognizing that, very obviously, there are very powerful competing interests that would want to compromise the objectivity of such an organization), it's just the nature of medicine in general. The human body is an unfathomably complex machine. Medical education explains in broad strokes how things work and how to fix them when they don't, but medical practice still consists of a whole lot of trial and error to see what actually works for a given patient's personal medical idiosyncrasies (which can be a product of their genetics, their home environment, their work, their medical history, their personality...). Just look at the whole concept of side effects: many of those effects are vanishingly rare, and in those cases, it's rare that anyone even knows why they happened except to be able to say that they happen very rarely.

Medicine isn't nearly as objective as people would like to think it is, so an independent body objectively laying out the pros and cons of a given drug isn't really possible even before getting into the human/corporate interest side of things.

I don't disagree, but there's still a world of difference between "Medicine is more subjective than most people think", and "This person is literally being paid to sell a product to you, and thus have all the motivation in the world to overpraise the positives and gloss over the negatives. And will use charisma and rhetoric to push product that may not necessarily be the best solution for a given problem."

TV commercials have largely driven me away from watching TV. Online I either block out ads mentally, or apply something stronger if that is made impossible. And "something stronger" may be not using that site anymore if it fighting me on ad blocking is yet more fuss. When a site causes me to mutter :I'm getting too old for this [expletive of your choice]", the end is nigh.

I will say that the idea of advertising prescription medicine is curious to a European. I've seen it Stateside, I just don't claim to understand it.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I don't disagree, but there's still a world of difference between "Medicine is more subjective than most people think", and "This person is literally being paid to sell a product to you, and thus have all the motivation in the world to overpraise the positives and gloss over the negatives. And will use charisma and rhetoric to push product that may not necessarily be the best solution for a given problem."

Yes, that is true.