Ughhhhhh
How pharmaceutical companies find sick users on Facebook
101–110 of 173 posts
Re: How pharmaceutical companies find sick users on Facebook
#102Ughhhhh
Re: How pharmaceutical companies find sick users on Facebook
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the US, it's legal to advertise drugs directly to patients. There's not a lot of places in the world where it happens, I'm assuming Scandinavia is one of them.
Maybe it’s because of how we buy prescription medicine. You’ll get the prescription from your doctor, and then go to a pharmacy where they will default to offering you the cheapest brand available at the time of your purchase, and ask if you’re cool with that. So we sort of have a culture where you only really stick to certain brands if you’ve ever had a bad reaction to a copy product. I’ve got a hay fever for instan…
Very few drug commercials are for drugs with generics. They almost always hold a monopoly position.
Re: How pharmaceutical companies find sick users on Facebook
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s bizarre even as an American who is used to it. The most amusing thing is they’re clearly running out of good ideas for names. The names are getting stranger every year. They’re basically just gibberish now.
It has to be a branding/patenting thing around uniqueness. I couldn't imagine trying to come up with new website names on a daily basis that would be expected to stick in a consumers mind.
There are whole consultancies around picking drug names.
The name isn't supposed to make an actual claim about effectiveness--you can't call it "cancercurazine"--but they often try for something vaguely suggestive: Viagra sounds like it makes you 'vital', Wellbutrin makes you feel well, Zyban keeps you away from nicotine, etc.
I've heard--but can't find a source saying--that this is why varenicline is sold under two different names: someone felt like 'champix' was too suggestive.
Re: How pharmaceutical companies find sick users on Facebook
#105Facebook is disclosing to third parties that its users have an "interest" in a medical condition although FB purports not to disclose users' medical conditions. Per @refurb in the comments, when people have an "interest" in a medical condition, they almost always actually suffer from that condition. It's almost like the algorithms are in charge over there, unsupervised.
I don't think it's an algorithm, I think it's a bunch of executives who think they are really smart because they found a loophole in the law.
Re: How pharmaceutical companies find sick users on Facebook
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I visited the US a few years ago it seems like every TV ad break there was a "Feeling X, ask your doctor about Y". Where X was some generic condition like bloating or feeling old, and X was a brand name prescription drug.
I can categorically say that is untrue. While not a fan of direct pharmaceutical marketing, the FDA has strict rules about what needs to be in an advertisement. Chiefly, it must address: * At least one approved use for the drug (the actual medical condition that it has been tested for) * The generic name * Nearly every side effect the drug can give you. There are some side-rules on that one.
I’m sure the paragraph of tiny text at the bottom of the screen technically met the above requirements. Doesn’t change the substance of the advert.
Re: How pharmaceutical companies find sick users on Facebook
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the US, it's legal to advertise drugs directly to patients. There's not a lot of places in the world where it happens, I'm assuming Scandinavia is one of them.
One particularly funny side effect is that the narrator needs to read out a comprehensive disclaimer. I was once on holiday and with US TV, and saw a few times an ad for performance enhancement for older gentlemen. The ad showed an older couple, who first are not very happy, then much happier with each other, frollicking in the long grass and disappearing off shot etc. While that was happening, the narrator was readi…
Those ads are inadvertently revealing -- they make it plain that it's a medical and pharmaceutical _industry_. Let the patient be warned not only of side effects but to the nature of that industry.
Re: How pharmaceutical companies find sick users on Facebook
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think you can entirely blame unethical, predatory behaviour on the government that enables it.
It's not a government that enables it, it's a government that enforces it through laws that guarantee and endow a local monopoly. Whenever you have an endowed monopoly without substitutes, you have extremely high prices. It's econ 101 and will happen 100% of the time (that's why I call it enforcement instead of enablement). If the government just got out of the way, the price of insulin would plummet .
What's stopping US companies from competing based on price? There's multiple producers of insulin in the US. Why do you need a foreign company to undercut them? If an international market would fix it, why doesn't the national market fix it? Why doesn't one of the US companies charge less than the others?
Re: How pharmaceutical companies find sick users on Facebook
#109I can relate to this from my personal experience of having a sick family member. Five years ago, my father-in-law was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, a rare blood cancer. I was close to him and joined several support and information pages on Facebook. Since doing that, I see ads on Facebook and elsewhere targeted to me as if I too had cancer. Now my father in law has passed, yet I still see ads that remind me of the…
Can you not turn off certain ad types in facebook?
Re: How pharmaceutical companies find sick users on Facebook
#110I can relate to this from my personal experience of having a sick family member. Five years ago, my father-in-law was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, a rare blood cancer. I was close to him and joined several support and information pages on Facebook. Since doing that, I see ads on Facebook and elsewhere targeted to me as if I too had cancer. Now my father in law has passed, yet I still see ads that remind me of the…
Have you tried telling Facebook to not show you these ads through the 3 dot menu in the top right? I don't go on Facebook much anymore, just curious