What is Digg?192 Comments
- bicyclethief, on 05/17/2008, -2/+41If erection lasts for more than four hours, please consult your physician.
- nathanaver, on 05/17/2008, -4/+36This is the second incoherent rant I have read on this topic in the last week. First off, even though it is fun to demonize drug companies, they are responsible for most of the increase in life expectancy in the US since WWII. Secondly, these data are meaningless without pointing to specific drugs that people are overdosing on and for what reasons. People commit suicide using drug overdoses, people accidentally overdose on opiates, there are errors in hospitals, and there are people that are just careless or stupid and use alcohol with drugs that it interacts with. None of these reasons are the fault of the drug company, but all of them are included in these statistics.
- Deliguy, on 05/17/2008, -7/+33you also got to take into account intentional abuse, nothing the pharm companies or doctors can do about that.
- v1c1ous, on 05/17/2008, -5/+31uhhh...wouldn't the rise in prescription drug use due to population growth have a direct effect on that demographic?
i mean, i am completely sure more people use prescription drugs today than in the 1980s. also "“Mortality statistics suggest that these deaths are largely due to the misuse and abuse of prescription drugs". how are drug companies responsible for people not reading directions?
this would be like saying "the sales of shaving blade sales risen since the 1970s; when people had hairier genitals. this has led to the gillette companies being responsible for sliced nuts while doing circus tricks" - evodevo1, on 05/17/2008, -3/+24What a load of crap. I mean if you don't want to take the drug, don't take it, no one is forcing you to. You need to take charge of your own health care by becoming informed. All these accusations based on nothing more than speculation. "Misuse and abuse of prescription drugs"...come on, anything can be abused.
Most people have no idea how complex your biology is. Although scientists try to target drugs to very specific pathways, almost all drug have some side effects because at this point in time, it is simply impossible to predict what other interactions a small molecule might have with some other component in your system. Taking a drug always involves weights its benefits vs its side effects.
If you want to complain about a rip off, talk about the entire health supplement industry, which has absolutely no scientific research backing the products. Most don't have very good quality control either, and not regulated by the FDA. - inactive, on 05/17/2008, -8/+27"It’s not young, black people who are dying either. This increase in deaths is happening in the middle-aged, white demographic. Why?"
Because a large majority of young people (especially minorities) don't have health insurance to get the prescription drugs that would kill them. Also, the fact that 1 in 9 black adult males are in jail doesn't help the situation in terms of class attainment.
It's easy to blame the pharmaceutical companies, but look at the way we eat in America. Maybe if we changed our diets and exercised instead of spending our days trapped behind a desk our population would be far healthier.
This "middle-class" lifestyle has afforded people the ability to believe that a pill can take care of every health ailment they have. We have a pill for almost everything now. The downfall with this is that people become exclusively reliant upon these pills for their health. The two major components to good health are Nutrition and Exercise. If you can manage to do those two things properly, you dramatically lower your risk for cancer and almost every disease you can think of.
[Sources] - http://familiesusa.org/issues/minority-health/fact ...
- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/03/31/insu ...
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2223709.stm - BoomShake007, on 05/17/2008, -0/+13Buried as inaccurate, fatally flawed logic.
- inactive, on 05/17/2008, -2/+15I have restless erection syndrome
- SolipsismX, on 05/17/2008, -0/+10As somebody that has RLS, I can confirm that the disease is NOT made up as the article has suggested.
- pyronik, on 05/17/2008, -2/+12"Big Pharma" gets a bad rap but do you realize how many drugs they give away? It's utterly staggering. Any time there is a major catastrophe or humanitarian crisis they are donating money. Also for people who bitch about their profits, do you realize how much money it cost to create a new prescription drug. Any drug that is deemed to have potential whether it becomes a success or not cost over $800 million dollars to produce. If you are going to risk $800 million dollars don't you think if you succeed you should get the fruits of your labor. But you digg morons have no idea what that means to a company, you just see large numbers and scream greedy pharma. You think that people... not you of course(you should be able to lead your life smoking pot and working at mcdonalds) should just spend all their money to do make the drugs for you. I am sorry but if these companies risk large sums of money and make large profit margins then thats fantastic for them. Hell thats good for me cause guess what they use the money for....plowing back into R&D. Not only that but they treat their employees like gold.
- moocow1452, on 05/17/2008, -0/+9The Who?
- Angaino, on 05/17/2008, -0/+8Is anybody else bothered by the broad, sweeping generalizations used in this article? There has got to be at least half a dozen of the things mentioned in the previous story (http://blog.createdebate.com/2008/05/14/how-to-spo ... submitted less than 3 hours prior. I'm not arguing FOR drug companies, but hey, should statements like "A good portion of the drugs that make up the multi-billion dollar industry of pharmaceuticals are simply doing nothing, if not making us worse." really be front page worthy? This statement doesn't say anything and doesn't even have the 'rigorous' citations of forbes.com like another statement. I agree with some of the opinions, but this is so far from a real argument (sorry, logically sound, defensible argument) that it hardly deserves the name. Get a real source and not some random blog entry.
- jjohnstn, on 05/17/2008, -0/+8True, the actually have to slice into the penis to relieve the pressure, else it will burst.
Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard-on. - Memnochxx, on 05/17/2008, -8/+15Everything in this article is *****. Buried.
- DaDrake, on 05/17/2008, -1/+8Does this surprise anyone? The fact is, you won't be able to prevent people from overdosing unless you give them 1 pill prescriptions. Secondly, with a growing unhealthy population, the need for medicine has increased. Finally, a lot of these problems are caused by patients being less than honest with doctors and not showing up for an annual exam (yes you are fat... the doctor will not laugh at you... get over and SEE a doctor before it gets worst).
But lets blame "big corporations" instead of expecting people to have some level of self-control. - cli006, on 05/17/2008, -1/+8So people ODing on drugs is the pharmaceutical company's fault? Oh ok, let's tell all the pill poppers out there in the US that it's not their fault.
Compare the mortality rate 30 years ago with today's. People died a lot more and a lot sooner back then. Part of the reason we're living better, stronger, and longer today is because of the trillions pharmaceutical companies pour into research.
No one forces you to buy OTC medicine. - bikepundit, on 05/17/2008, -0/+7Thank you, couldn't agree more. I also agree with the sentiment that the industry needs to be controlled, but not sued into oblivion. Do we really want to be dependent on foreign nations for our drug supply? Alot of people seem to be angry at us these days...
- MrSir, on 05/17/2008, -3/+10compared to other healthcare spending, pharmaceuticals are somehing like 10%, yet they usually the most economic of treatments, discounting just plain being healthy. But even so, not everyone can be healthy even though we are living that way. It's in our genes. Yes, I agree that a good number of meds are prescribed uselessly. lard ass mcgee can's just take a pill to make him healthy, and in "true depression" depression meds help, not in "oops i lost my job and my dog died" depression.
Why do people on Digg always pick on pharm companies. No profit= no medicines, and we go back to the dark ages. - bjornski, on 05/17/2008, -0/+6If you're too shy to talk to your doctor, you could try leeches to try bleeding off some of the pressure.
Heck, some people might even get off on it.
/ewwww - mechagazoo15, on 05/17/2008, -0/+6Ya know why they tell you that? Because if you don't do something about it, the pressure becomes too much, blood stops flowing correctly, and then your penis dies as if you had put a tourniquet on it. Fun stuff.
- futzy99, on 05/17/2008, -0/+6How is the pharmaceutical company responsible for who their drugs are prescribed to? Doctors are the ones who are prescribing medication without the patient being in the condition the drug was intended for. The drugs work at what they were made to do. The headline of this article is just a ***** attention grabber. In the article, the author even says that most of the problem is with the people, not the pharmaceutical companies.
- chenyu768, on 05/17/2008, -2/+8Boycott!!!!
oh wait they're not made in China - inactive, on 05/17/2008, -0/+6Is that your conclusion? Please explain your reasoning.
- Natnie, on 05/17/2008, -0/+6 Overdose is the operative word... so these dolts are taking more than what their doctor told them, and dying. Whose fault is that? It's not the fact that 46% of Americans take at least 1 pill a day. Sometimes, those pills are actually needed! You've got HRT for post-menopausal females which helps prevent osteoporosis, anti-anxiety meds for those people that have trouble leaving the house each day, birth control pills for a variety of reasons not limited to contraception, meds for cholesterol or the heart, etc (you know, so they don't die and stuff)... the list goes on. These things are fully justified.
- MWeather, on 05/17/2008, -0/+5I've always found people less sympathetic of a young black male oding on heroin than they are of an old white woman oding on oxycontin.
The black male is generally characterized as being the one at fault, whereas the white woman is the victim of pharmaceutical companies, as the lawsuits against Purdue Pharma can attest.
You could also draw the conclusion from the demographics of each drug's abuse, and their relative sentencing. - Tipperzack, on 05/17/2008, -0/+5During the 80s there some law "couldn't find it" that open the flood gates for prescription drugs to be adverted like normal ads.
This could be one of the things that added up to the problem we read about now. - FLMarijuana, on 05/17/2008, -0/+5And people think marijuana is dangerous, Pffffft.
- elipabst, on 05/17/2008, -0/+5Many of those new drugs that can cause damage if used improperly are saving the lives of thousands of people who use them correctly. Are we going to ban powerful drugs that are saving peoples lives in order to spare the lives of morons who abuse them illegally?
- wattersm, on 05/17/2008, -0/+5I love how the article makes it sound OK if it was black people instead. Buried for being a poorly researched, undocumented piece of crap.
- inactive, on 05/17/2008, -3/+7Isn't it interesting that they will spend a billion dollars to make and promote a drug that simply maintains the symptoms of a disease at a more acceptable level, instead of investing in a drug that might sure the disease altogether? There is no money to be made off curing people, is there...?
- Lilitou, on 05/17/2008, -0/+4No, there is no way to prevent cancer. There are ways to reduce the likelihood that you'll get it, but that's not the same thing at all. Eating healthy foods will only take you so far, especially if you have a genetic predisposition.
- nusuni, on 05/17/2008, -0/+4I'm all for telling people to get off their asses and exercise, but why blame companies because people make bad PERSONAL decisions? It is your own choice to take the pills.
Oh wait, I forgot this is Digg. Everyone here thinks companies are to blame for all of the world's problems. I guess personal responsibility is a foreign idea to most Diggers.
Go ahead and Digg me down, you know you want to. - Nidy1, on 05/17/2008, -0/+4Gross....where can I get leeches?
- Murdats, on 05/17/2008, -0/+4because big <whatever> is evil and out to get us, EVIL I SAY.
as soon as someone refers to something as big they are about to go on about how the are evil and conspiring to kill us all.
big government, big pharma, big oil, etc. - gr00vy, on 05/17/2008, -0/+4Ok is Scientology submitting digg stories now?
- slightlygifted, on 05/17/2008, -0/+4he doesnt have it though so it cant exist!
- ApathyDrive, on 05/17/2008, -0/+3This could also have to do with the massive pharmacist shortage that is predicted to last 10 years and the fact they being used to whore out their license to bag and sell medications (which can be done by pharmacist technicians and automated machinery) instead of being used to reconcile drug interactions and spending time educating the patients, physicians, and nurses while being compensated for it.
- BestJaxx, on 05/17/2008, -2/+5People are too gullible. You shouldn't take prescription drugs unless you truly need them, and if you aren't sure if you do or not, than you don't.
- olddirtycr, on 05/17/2008, -0/+3Maybe the people who are defending the companies are the ones who also use drugs??? Way to assume.
- Typhoon2009, on 05/17/2008, -0/+3I used to be on a mood stabilizer pill. Not quite a full on anti-depressant but it was supposed to have the same effect. I was on it for 3 years before dropping it (with approval of the doctor; going cold turkey on meds like these can be risky sometimes). It's been 2 years since, and I've been fine. Maybe the pills 'cured' me, I don't know, but all I know is that I've gone along fine without the medicine. The only prescription medication I take now is for acne (I have it really bad).
- MadEnvoy, on 05/17/2008, -1/+4Mmmm, percodan.
- inactive, on 05/17/2008, -0/+3Generally, I'm not bothered by generalizations...
- bjornski, on 05/17/2008, -1/+4I actually agree with some of that. Overppulation is a problem. Curing all of todays ills, WOULD have a huge impact on, well, everything. Cure all the disease? We can live up to 80? 90? 100? Heck, with machines now, we could be kept alive past the 100 year mark.
Would it benefit anyone? Not really. Pulling Death off of his job at keeping the herd thinned, would actually be a bad thing.
But then I also believe that suicide and euthanasia should be legalized. If someone WANTS to kill themselves, really, who are you to stop them? Terminally ill? Hell, LET them get an assited "nap"! It's a hell of a lot more humane than forcing them to stay alive, on machines of necessary, in great pain, until their body shuts down. This "save life at all costs" mentality is cruel if taken to these extremes.
And even the mentally ill. Why fight like hell to keep them from taking a "nap" too? It's not your damned business. And from listening to the way everyone talks about them, there's the general feeling that many people would like to see them removed from society anyway. The crazy, the homeless, the destitute..... Know what? If someone wants to kill themselves, LET THEM. Why make them try slicing up their arms, hanging themselves from trees, or shooting oneself? Why not sign the forms, go into your doctors office, hook up and watch your movie. Press the button, and go to sleep. (yes, "Soylent Green" had it right).
While it sounds cruel, hairydotus does have a point. People dying actually DOES benefit the "herd".
So go ahead and cure AIDS/Cancer. But legalize doctor-assited suicide too. If you're helping one end of the spectrum, you almost have to help the other, or the scales get thrown out of whack. - inactive, on 05/17/2008, -2/+5Thanks Downy Downington... we were almost having some fun there for a minute.
- tucsonsun13, on 05/17/2008, -0/+3Actually they are, essentially -- many of the active ingredients (thousands) in brand name drugs are synthesized in China and other nearby countries. This includes top-tier, high sellers such as Lipitor and Viagra. Most consumers are unaware of this fact.
- roflbrothel, on 05/17/2008, -0/+3I had a pretty similar experience to this guy, I was on Ritalin from a very early age to about 16. During that time I was socially stunted, zoned out, barely ate, underweight, and pretty weak. If I ran my heart would skip beats.
I stopped taking the medication, maintained my grades, became healthier, and became friendly again. Parents don't seem to notice what this ***** does to their kids. If you're feeding this ***** to your children, pay closer attention, they may be going through what we went through.
Maybe they aren't, but if they are you owe it to them to reevaluate the situation or you're a ***** parent and if they aren't, it can't hurt to pay closer attention to what's going on with your children. - Di0genes, on 05/17/2008, -0/+3If you are trying to be edgy or provocative, it isn't working. You just come across as a belligerent, overly opinionated doofus.
"Against any cure for cancer". That is one of the stupidest things I have ever read, even on the internet. - Mattwdj, on 05/17/2008, -0/+3the benefits out way the risks by soo much. I would also argue that the majority of these are people whom abuse oxycotin and other opiates.
The reason they earn huge profits, is becuase they are needed and improve people lifes. Furthermore, almost all of their profits go back into R&D to develop new drugs. What many people don't realize is the huge cost associated with creating a new drug. That is also why the advertise so much because after the FDA approves a drug there is about 10 years left on the patent, so basically the Drug companies have to earn all that money plus profits back with in 10 years. - robberry, on 05/17/2008, -1/+4We have to do something. Our white children are dying.
- jmoo1, on 05/17/2008, -0/+2Another beat-up by Big internet
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