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Originally Posted by jayeff
Low post count, you are not promoting anyone, so I guess your response was serious. But what "information"? Two people close to me were handled badly by a series of doctors: that was the only information in my post. The rest was conjecture stemming from an unwillingness to assume they were simply unlucky in their choice of doctors.
Here is some information (from the AARP website). "Thirty percent of Americans talk to their doctors about a specific drug they've seen advertised, and of these, 44 percent receive it". They continue: "Sales increases of the 50 most advertised drugs made up almost half of the growth in retail spending on prescription drugs... The 9,850 other drugs on the market accounted for the rest of the 12-month rise."
How likely it is that almost half the people responding to a TV advert actually needed the drug they were subsequently prescribed? How likely is it that sales pattern is a accurate reflection of patients' illnesses? So do we have doctors prescribing (often powerful) drugs they know patients do not need or is only limited care being taken with (initial) diagnoses?
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Hence, the advertising dollars spent on drugs like 'the little purple pill' for something that is a syndrome, not a disease and can easily be taken care of by changing the diet....same goes for other syndromes.....cut out sugar in a kid's diet and voila! - no more need for Ritalin....although I'm speaking very generally here, so no attacks, folks..
Drug companies will always have drugs to sell and people to buy them, as we are a nation who desires the 'magic bullet'...
But, think about this: There WAS a cure found for polio...well, not a cure, but a prevention..and small pox.....There are prevention vaccines for all kinds of diseases that plagued us..
So, the shift turns from treatment to prevention and billions will be made from that. How many people get chicken pox now? Or measles? Or diptheria? Or pertussis?
There's money to be made from both sides of the fence and believe it....drug companies and the medicos will find a way.
Someone said that years ago, doctors diagnosed without all that fancy equipment...well, yeah, they did, until America became so litigious, combined with the raping of Medicare..those WERE the golden days of medicine...when Medicare was an open artery of flowing money...when gerentology was a for-profit industry....and, let's not forget the indigent....
So, there will be cancers that are no longer worth treating...and cures or remissions will be possible...there's no money to be made in oat cell cancer of the lungs....or certain brain tumours....cystic fibrosis doesn't earn profits...look at the progress for diabetes...it's possible, in our lifetimes, there will be a transplant..the delivery systems are getting more and more sophisticated....diabetes is no longer profitable because the treatment costs are staggering, as diabetes is one of those diseases that affects every system and humans are not real compliant.
On a lighter note, there is a huge serge in genetic research, locating certain markers...I foresee vaccines...there's a lot of money to be made in vaccinations.