Really, though, it's absurd to demand that the rest of world be grateful. Try changing the system in the US and you will find it exceedingly difficult due to the deep pockets of big pharma and the massive role money plays in the US democratic system. So no, the rest of the world should not be grateful that a capitalist system is doing what it does.
If you only way to sell a drug is to convince people they need it in the first place then I think it ought to be illegal, yes. Look at the massive opioid crisis in the USA which stems in great part from pharma pushing drugs people didn't really need and getting them addicted. If that's the only way you can figure out to fund cancer research we have a big problem indeed.
When economic historians of the future consider the current era's pharma industry, they will marvel at how much money was spent for how little benefit. The cure to cancer will not come from pharma. (Quite possibly from biotech, but that's a different thing.) The incentives are wrong: cures are less valuable than indefinite treatments. Look how much they have to charge for the hep C cure. If that were a mere treatment, they could amortize their "research costs" over a lifetime. Even better than treatments that work are treatments that might work. One poor suffering patient might be prescribed 15 such, multiple times a day for the rest of her life.
Still, for many hep C sufferers even an expensive cure is a good thing. Many other conditions respond in agreeable ways to some medicines for some patients some of the time. Maybe the research costs too much for some of them. One suspects that a more rational FDA process could cut costs for most drugs, but no one who would benefit from that has any control over the process itself. The whole edifice is a bit monstrous. Just the same, if the golden goose requires drug marketing, do we really want to do away with drug marketing?
The drug industry likes to say that, but could someone back it up?
On the other hand, there are tons of people who have stories about knowing something was wrong, being told by 3 physicians that it was nothing, then finding a 4th who diagnosed them with something the others missed because a patient is usually their own strongest advocate.
A boss of mine a few years ago mentioned that he thought the best solution was for a disease to have ads. All of the companies that have drugs in market for that disease will want to buy in and say "Feeling X symptoms? Talk to your doctor; you might have Y". Of course there are still a ton of problems (there was no market for impotence until Pfizer re-branded it as ED, there are lots of diseases where there are low single digit options, etc), but it's a good start, in my opinion.
To tie this back to the topic at hand, there really isn't a trusted authority in the role of crypto purchases, aside from maybe a very forward-thinking/risky financial manager? Part of the problem is the very benefit: marketing to unqualified people gives access for anyone to grow their wealth, but also gives anyone the ability to lose a ton of money. It's sort of the central problem with Libertarianism overall.
Your colleagues in marketing agree with you, though they probably have a different definition for "useful". This 2012 article[0] says pharma spent $24B in marketing to professionals vs $4B to consumers. I assume relatively more is spent on consumers now but didn't find any more recent numbers.
It is also worth mentioning that pharma now spends more on marketing than research.
> On the other hand, there are tons of people who have stories about knowing something was wrong, being told by 3 physicians that it was nothing, then finding a 4th who diagnosed them with something the others missed because a patient is usually their own strongest advocate.
Are there any peer reviewed studies to back this up? As a researcher in the field I'm sure this is the threshold you would want to meet before making such an assertion.
Also, are there any studies that can tell us the ratio of marketing spent on informing consumers of legit ailments vs what is spent on kickbacks, hiring former cheerleaders as marketers, junkets for doctors, coupons for the on patent drug when the off patent drug works just fine, paying the generic company to not sell its drug to compete, etc or any of the other shady practices that pharma engages in?
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/11/big-p...
However, many countries allow for Rx drug advertising / marketing targeted towards consumers.
Unless you mean to say that drug companies can advertise to prescription drug users for the specific window when they happen to be actively taking a prescription drug. Which seems rather difficult to manage and would require a massive privacy violation to achieve. Plus I'm not clear what the delivery mechanism would be unless you're just talking about inserts delivered with the drugs themselves.
What that means is that the particular Rx drug being advertised can only be advertised to consumers of that Rx drug in question. So insulin can only be advertised to people with diabetes.
The interesting thing about this is that it leaves most of the power with the HCP.
As for the delivery mechanism, there weren't too many options in the recent past, however, these days there are POC marketing companies like Outcome Health (and others) and a growing number of software applications are aware of their user's health condition / needs (with permission of course either explicitly or by virtue of the intended use, like apps for diabetes patients, etc.).
Let’s think of another industry — tires. Is a consumer typically an automotive engineer or a mechanic? Then why should it be legal to advertise tires to consumers? Ultimately a mechanic will have to install the tires. However, that certainly shouldn’t preclude a consumer making their preferences known. With meds, a doctor can always say no — and they should and do if it isn’t indicated for the particular affliction.
The idea that consumers need to be shielded from information is a bit weird to me.
"This is a good tire, it will last longer than most and will serve you well. It is highly unlikely to interfere with any other parts of your car"
VS.
"This is a enzyme inhibitor that will degrade the signalling molecule cyclic guanosine monophosphate which will prevent smooth muscle relaxation. It could have unforeseen interactions with any number of different commonly imbibed chemicals."
"We don't even know about all the things this molecule could do inside your body, but one of the things we do know about turns out to be pretty useful, and so we have made an arrangement with the physicians cartel. You have to pay one of them to monitor your individual situation to make it less likely you die or suffer some horribly grievous injury. In exchange, they will absorb some of our product liability for the most frequent and least severe side effects. This is usually a win-win-win, but sometimes it's just win-win for us and the physicians and a loss for you."
When you want to pump people full of newly developed and recently tested chemicals, you do need someone capable of reading and understanding the publications of medical studies, and keeping track of all the recommendations published by the professional association. Auto mechanics do have a similar, less extensive sort of training in that they need to do the same kind of thing with service bulletins, but tire maintenance is one of those things that anyone with the right tool can do, like changing oil and filters or replacing brake pads.
Knowing what cryptocurrency is right for you is even simpler than that. None of them are. Even the very first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, is still essentially in beta release, and not suitable for consumption by the general public. Anyone who can't or won't admit that the technology is not yet ready for wide-scale adoption is selling you vapor, and will probably run off with your money, leaving you with a bag of wooden nickels. That's why the ads are coming down. Every last one of them is a fraud, like the snake-oil panaceas of unregulated frontier pharmacologists that were pretty much just booze and opioids.
That investing carries large amounts of risk isn't new or unknown to most. If you cash out your 401K and put it in AAPL, even a modest decline could eliminate your retirement. And those are the super-regulated "safe" investments as opposed to those super dodgy "not-safe" investments that are so awful you're not allowed to advertise for them anymore.
This does not mean that Doug the village doctor isn't in Novartis' pocket and trying to shill their pills, just that your area of expertise is not nearly as high enough to make an accurate diagnosis of the best way to treat an ailment through medication.
Funny you mention this case. Do you think the state should choose the doctor and facility you go to? For example, below a certain income, you only have access to a certain type of facilites.
And what if the state said that you could only receive care from americans? because doctors outside of the US, even if they have international reputation and acclaim, or experience, or a great track record, you shouldn't be able to see them?
What if the us forbid you to leave the country to buy meds somewhere else as well, or to get care outside.
Beware: some of this are actually happening right now!
Sounds interesting; could you recommend something?
That's just not how advertising works. Investments are products like anything else and advertising is literally designed to expand the number of people who might purchase a product. You can say this about any product with differing utility among possible users.
> Truck buying should not be driven by advertisement but by facts. In my experience, any truck advertisement tying to appeal to mass audiences is fraud.
I don't need a truck to live in the city, but that doesn't mean Chevy should be banned from running advertisements in a city.
Those are clearly not fraudulent.
That said, the crypto ads are less like that & more like the auction prize site ads, so good riddance.
If you step into a large bank, they'll tend to get a cut on each fund they sell you -- whether that is a good fund or a bad. Often these funds are also run by the bank, and they charge excessive fees for managing.
But you can still expect returns on shoes. Construction boots for construction workers, for example, are as much an investment as construction tools. An investment is more than just something that accrues value over time.
[0] http://www.businessinsider.com/18-year-old-entrepreneur-make...
That definition of "investment" includes almost everything anyone can possibly do.
“Food” doesn’t generally appreciate or generate cash flow. (Outside of obvious restaurant contexts.)
You can call food an “investment” but you could also call a dog a cat — that doesn’t make it so.
It's a slippery slope and with the decentralization revolution that is happening, this will only keep on getting more blurry.
If you buy them to HODL because you think potato options are going to bring you a return, it's an investment.
If you've invested in a global, decentralized game of hot potato, well, that's crypto ;)
Somewhat related: A few years ago, in Argentina it was usual that the farmers keep most of their production of soy in big long bags in the field, because if they sold them they only could get pesos and with a 30% annual inflation it was better to keep the grains and sell them when they need to buy something. (In Spanish) https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silo_bolsa autotranslation https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=es&tl=en&js=y&prev...
A durable good which you own in order to make yourself more productive is known as a capital good. Shoes, clothes, and shelter qualify, to the extent that having these things increases productivity. Food would not qualify, since it a consumable and not a durable good. The purchase of capital goods, for the purpose of increasing productivity, is investment.