Supreme Court to consider shield for drug, cigarette firms

[burn out]

it's funny how we went from talking about the article to effexor xr.

 

[bingalpaws]

yes, i definitely agree with holding the pharmaceutical companies responsible for antidepressant induced suicides.

How about heroin dealers for suicides committed while someone was withdrawing from heroin?

At the end of the day it needs to be the consumer watching out for what they consume. I dunno, I guess I'm just of the mindset you've gotta be, well, pretty damn slow to be looking to the gov for what you should do with your consumables. Hell, I just read an article the other day saying the FDA now recommends you DO NOT give cold medications to kids under 2 or 3. I'm reading it like "are you fuggin kidding me? People are dumping cold medication in their little kids?", I mean I don't look to the fda to tell me shit like that lol.

 

[MONSTA!!]

if you're going to put such a short warning, why not just say something like "this product has been flagged by the surgeon general as posing serious health threats visit www.surgeongeneral.com (or whatever) for more info or write to such and such." and then online they can have a much more complete list of the risks involved in smoking for those who are interested. that way no one could sue because it would all be there online or by mail.

I have to agree with you here burn out, this seems like a sensible and practical thing to do, effectively removing most of the problems with current labelling. Fortunately I live in the UK where cigarette labelling is much clearer we have bold, block faced letters on the front of the box, infact at one point we even had pictures of diseased lungs and mouths on the front of the box.

I do worry however at the thought of allowing these drug companies to be exempt from being sued just because an outside body has allowed the product to market. Pharmaceutical companies have been known to sit on or completely cover up negative side effects caused by their products, does this mean that just because a product has been approved by a party who may be unaware of such potential problems that the pharm company such be exempt from being sued? I should think not.

 

[brainslookfunny]

How about heroin dealers for suicides committed while someone was withdrawing from heroin?

At the end of the day it needs to be the consumer watching out for what they consume. I dunno, I guess I'm just of the mindset you've gotta be, well, pretty damn slow to be looking to the gov for what you should do with your consumables. Hell, I just read an article the other day saying the FDA now recommends you DO NOT give cold medications to kids under 2 or 3. I'm reading it like "are you fuggin kidding me? People are dumping cold medication in their little kids?", I mean I don't look to the fda to tell me shit like that lol.

You don't think Wyeth pharm fucked up on that one? They market a drug to teens for depression, but all their research was conducted on adults. What is supposed to be an antidepressant ends up making some kids so depressed they kill themselves. No warning given whatsoever. Just how does Wyeth get off marketing a drug to kids that it never tested for kids?

And hundreds of those cold meds are marketed for kids! That seems wrong if kids shouldn't take em...

Still, these kind of exceptional cases aside, personal responsibility ftw.

 

[MyDoorsAreOpen]

Pharmaceutical companies already have their tentacles all through the world of healthcare in the US. They've also been cited for a lot of ... erm... mistakes, that have had disastrous consequences for the lives of patients, but could have been preempted with just one more simple trial, in some cases.

I'd say consumers / patients need all the legal leverage against big Pharm as they can get, because lord only knows they don't give a shit about you or your health.

 

[tobala]

Does this mean heroin salesmen will no longer be prosecuted for the deaths of their customers?

After all, the junkie knows the product can be dangerous...

 

[Pleonastic]

From Australia.....

Front of pack:

Back of pack:

The light blue bit is available for the brand and logo etc. Hard to miss!

 

[bingalpaws]

that's...weird and disgusting!!

 

[twgburst]

They should make an entire new class of rx drugs that are exempt from law suits for high risk medications. Kind of like schedule 2 drugs without the addiction warnings.
"2(B) The drug or other substance has a currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States or a currently accepted medical use with severe restrictions."

 

[mepat1111]

they rotate around I thought? In canada they're a million times worse lol

Didn't read past this post, but in Australia they have big, prominent pictures of the effects of smoking on the front of the package. They include diseased lungs, dying babies, bleeding brains, eyes with ruptured blood vesels and more. They are very graphic and most definitely don't leave any doubt in the consumers mind what might happen. However they have removed the part of the box that tells you exactly how much of each chemical (ie. the strength of the cigarette) is in each smoke.

However it has done absolutely nothing to curb smoking addiction (suprise suprise), it is actually a bit of a joke amoungst young people. People who smoke the same brand often identify their packet by the picture on the front:

"I got lung cancer"
"Mine's the stroke packet"
*When buying a pack of smokes* "hey can I get the dying baby please?"

 

[burn out]

Didn't read past this post, but in Australia they have big, prominent pictures of the effects of smoking on the front of the package. They include diseased lungs, dying babies, bleeding brains, eyes with ruptured blood vesels and more. They are very graphic and most definitely don't leave any doubt in the consumers mind what might happen. However they have removed the part of the box that tells you exactly how much of each chemical (ie. the strength of the cigarette) is in each smoke.

However it has done absolutely nothing to curb smoking addiction (suprise suprise), it is actually a bit of a joke amoungst young people. People who smoke the same brand often identify their packet by the picture on the front:

"I got lung cancer"
"Mine's the stroke packet"
*When buying a pack of smokes* "hey can I get the dying baby please?"

they have curbed smoking in canada and the UK though.

 

[bingalpaws]

by how much? Sources?

 

[burn out]

how much is hard to gauge because you can't do an experimental design on this sort of thing, only a quasi experimental design. so the question you're asking is really impossible to answer. but as for a source indicating they do work:

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/62219.php

 

[bingalpaws]

interesting - I think I like the US labels the best still

I wonder why they go so hardcore on some of these packages when they don't have any data that's actually showing benefits, like decreased hospital admissions or something - I understand what you mean about how hard it would be to do a straight experiment on this, but that kinda study you posted isn't really very reaffirming given it's just gauging perceptions (doesn't even seem like it attempted to track usage rates or anything, people just mentioned that the pics made them more aware or whatnot).

 

[burn out]

hospital admissions wouldn't work very well because of the lag time. some times people smoke for 30-40 years before getting emphysema or cancer and so many confounding factors can come into play over such a lengthy time period.

 

[sunshinefix]

I think it's pretty crazy to assume prescription drugs are NOT harmful to your health, or can't be. It is your responsibility as a patient to ask your doctor questions about the studies done on the particular drug you are being prescribed. Also, it is important that you understand what your dosage is.

With regards to the article, I think the patients could not sue their caregiver because it sounds to me that their caregivers were operating above standard of care. I just don't think enough research is being done on drugs anymore, since it's become such a moneymaker. Hasn't anyone seen the multitudes of ads for drugs everywhere, like they invent a disease, convince you that you have it, then they sell it to you. The prescription drug industry is very predatory.

 

[Nickatina]

This is unbelievable that you guys advocate immunity for the pharmaceutical industry. Do you understand what this means to medicine in the future? Consider this hypothetical:

Joe Regular, an otherwise healthy person goes to the hospital because he he has a sore throat. It turns out it is strep, and normally by this point surgery would be necessary to remove the tonsils, a normal procedure that has been done for ages. However, a medication had recently been introduced and approved by the FDA proposed to fix the tonsils so that there is no need to operate. Since a rep from the company who manufactures the drug has been to this doctor to explain all the benefits of the drug, the doctor is sold on it and prescribes it to the man, telling him that it is certainly less risky than surgery. He is told to take it for a week and it would eliminate the need for surgery.

During the week the patient is starting to feel lightheaded and dizzy. He calls the doctor and the doctor tells him that it is a normal side-effect of the medication and to continue using it. On the sixth day, after dosing, the patient goes to the ER and it is found that he had renal failure. All other factors have been ruled out and it is found to be from the medication he had been given. This new condition cripples the man and he misses work for an extended period of time and also has to go through extensive work at the hospital to repair the condition, some of which wasn't covered by his HMO.

So Joe is now in a dilemma. He could have underwent routine surgery and should have been fine afterward, but instead was duped into using a new medication that hadn't been extensively tested and now left him crippled, the victim of being a human guinea pig in a sense. Who can he seek to recover damages from? Say it was the pharmaceutical companies that neglected to show or sponsor studies that would prove certain risks, why shouldn't they be liable?

I hear a lot of you saying that we are responsible for what we put in our bodies, that we should do our own research before putting anything in our body. Well if the big pharma is immune from lawsuits, the cause of this will create the effect of unsafe medications being pushed through the ever incompetent FDA without research being done or, at least, available publicly on the hazards of this medicine. And WHY shouldn't we trust our doctors? They are the ones who have went to an insane amount of school for this stuff and while I will admit there are some naive doctors out there, the layman should have no reason to doubt what their doctor tells them.

 

[MyDoorsAreOpen]

^^^ +1

When I start practicing medicine, I'm going to be incredibly skeptical any time some pharmaceutical company sends a sales rep to my office to do their hat n' cane song about some new wonderpill, replete with promises of all sorts of kickbacks for prescribing it over the established alternative. I'd like to think I'd be willing to wait at least a year, until there's more evidence in the peer-reviewed journals about what the drug's long-term side effects turned out to be. I'll also let big pharm reps know right off the bat that they're spinning their wheels with me, because when it comes to medicine, I'm as conservative as they come -- if the old treatment plan would do fine, and is fully covered by that person's insurance, why is a new one even necessary?

 

[bingalpaws]

shouldn't even let them set an app with you in the first place. Call me crazy but I just don't see any real positive benefits of a company rep explaining a new product that aren't ridiculously outweighed by the biases involved.

 

[burn out]

This is unbelievable that you guys advocate immunity for the pharmaceutical industry. Do you understand what this means to medicine in the future? Consider this hypothetical:

Joe Regular, an otherwise healthy person goes to the hospital because he he has a sore throat. It turns out it is strep, and normally by this point surgery would be necessary to remove the tonsils, a normal procedure that has been done for ages.

it's not necessary to remove the tonsils in a patient with strep throat. strep throat is treated with antibiotics and fever reducers. removing the tonsils is only done because some doctors think it reduces your risk of getting it again but it's not a necessary procedure.