Monday, August 21, 2006
Helpless Drug Consumers...
Moops:
I thought this was blog-worthy!!! Worth pursuing the question why it’s so hard for people to take personal responsibility for things… if you can take a pill for something, why change your behavior? And if that pill causes you problems down the road, it’s STILL not your fault—you can sue the drug company for damages. J
Drug ads sell a problem, not a solution
By Jonathan Rowe
Mon Aug 21, 4:00 AM ET
It is an old saying in the advertising trade that you sell the problem, not the solution. That helps explain why the media today are awash with images of disease. Erectile dysfunction, depression, stress, attention deficit disorder, on and on – you can't escape them and the sense of looming peril that they conjure up.
Politicians sell terror and fear; pharmaceutical companies sell disease. Every state and stage of existence has become a pathology in need of pharmaceutical "intervention," and life itself is a petri dish of biochemical deficiency and need. Shyness is now "social anxiety disorder." A twitchy tendency has become "restless leg syndrome." Three decades ago the head of Merck dreamed aloud of the day when the definition of disease would be so broad that his company could "sell to everyone," like chewing gum.
That day is rapidly approaching, if it's not already here. "We're increasingly turning normal people into patients," said Dr. Lisa M. Schwartz of the Dartmouth Medical School. "The ordinary experiences of life become a diagnosis, which makes healthy people feel like they're sick."
In one sense, the ads have been successful. The Kaiser Family Foundation found that every dollar drug companies spend on ads brings more than four dollars in additional sales. But for most others, the result has been soaring medical insurance costs, toxic side effects, and new tensions between doctors and patients, who increasingly badger doctors for the drugs they've seen on TV.
One study found that 30 percent of Americans have made these demands. A Minnesota doctor complained recently that patients now push him for sleep medications "when maybe they just need to go to bed on a more regular basis."
But perhaps the worst part is that prescription drug ads have immersed us all in a pervasive drug culture that seems to have no boundaries. We are being reduced to helpless "consumers" who have no capacity to deal with challenges other than by taking a pill. Last month Tim Pawlenty, the Republican governor of Minnesota, called for a moratorium on prescription drug ads. It's about time.
For most of the past half century, there were tight restrictions on the general advertising of prescription drugs. These require doctors' guidance for a reason; so why should Madison Avenue get involved? But under heavy pressure from the drug and advertising industries, the government backed down in the late 1990s, and that started the tsunami.
Spending on drug ads for the general public more than tripled between 1996 and 2001. It is now some $4 billion a year, which is more than twice what McDonald's spends on ads. In 1994, the typical American had seven prescriptions a year, which is no small number. By 2004, that was up to 12 a year. Homebuilders are touting medicine cabinets that are "triple-wide."
The industry says this is all about "educating" the consumer. But an ad executive was more candid when he said – boasted, really – that the goal is to "drive patients to their doctors." Reuters Business Insight, a publication for investors, explained that the future of the industry depends on its ability to "create new disease markets." "The coming years," it said, "will bear greater witness to the corporate-sponsored creation of disease."
The Kaiser study found that drug ads increase sales for entire categories of drugs, not just the one in question. The ads really are selling the disease more than a cure.
Advertising is just one way the industry has sought to accomplish this goal. It also funds patient advocacy groups such as Children With Attention Deficit Disorder (CHADD), and doctors who push for expanded definitions of disease, among a host of other things. (When the definition of ADD expanded in the 1980s, the number of kids tagged with this problem increased by 50 percent.)
But advertising is the most pervasive and aggressive way of selling sickness. It also is the hardest to justify. Medicine is supposed to be about science, not huckstering; about healing people, not persuading more of them that they are sick. There are far better ways to inform the public about health issues than to spend billions of dollars a year pushing pills.
This is why more than 200 medical school professors recently called for an end to prescription drug ads, and why close to 40 health and seniors groups have joined them. Even the American Medical Association, many members of which have close ties to the pharmaceutical industry, has urged restrictions. Washington should listen to these doctors. As Governor Pawlenty put it, we need to put "the decisionmaking back where it should be – on an informed basis between the patient and the doctor."
•Jonathan Rowe is issues director at Commercial Alert and a fellow at the Tomales Bay Institute. He is a former Monitor staff writer.
Copyright © 2006 The Christian Science Monitor
I thought this was blog-worthy!!! Worth pursuing the question why it’s so hard for people to take personal responsibility for things… if you can take a pill for something, why change your behavior? And if that pill causes you problems down the road, it’s STILL not your fault—you can sue the drug company for damages. J
Drug ads sell a problem, not a solution
By Jonathan Rowe
Mon Aug 21, 4:00 AM ET
It is an old saying in the advertising trade that you sell the problem, not the solution. That helps explain why the media today are awash with images of disease. Erectile dysfunction, depression, stress, attention deficit disorder, on and on – you can't escape them and the sense of looming peril that they conjure up.
Politicians sell terror and fear; pharmaceutical companies sell disease. Every state and stage of existence has become a pathology in need of pharmaceutical "intervention," and life itself is a petri dish of biochemical deficiency and need. Shyness is now "social anxiety disorder." A twitchy tendency has become "restless leg syndrome." Three decades ago the head of Merck dreamed aloud of the day when the definition of disease would be so broad that his company could "sell to everyone," like chewing gum.
That day is rapidly approaching, if it's not already here. "We're increasingly turning normal people into patients," said Dr. Lisa M. Schwartz of the Dartmouth Medical School. "The ordinary experiences of life become a diagnosis, which makes healthy people feel like they're sick."
In one sense, the ads have been successful. The Kaiser Family Foundation found that every dollar drug companies spend on ads brings more than four dollars in additional sales. But for most others, the result has been soaring medical insurance costs, toxic side effects, and new tensions between doctors and patients, who increasingly badger doctors for the drugs they've seen on TV.
One study found that 30 percent of Americans have made these demands. A Minnesota doctor complained recently that patients now push him for sleep medications "when maybe they just need to go to bed on a more regular basis."
But perhaps the worst part is that prescription drug ads have immersed us all in a pervasive drug culture that seems to have no boundaries. We are being reduced to helpless "consumers" who have no capacity to deal with challenges other than by taking a pill. Last month Tim Pawlenty, the Republican governor of Minnesota, called for a moratorium on prescription drug ads. It's about time.
For most of the past half century, there were tight restrictions on the general advertising of prescription drugs. These require doctors' guidance for a reason; so why should Madison Avenue get involved? But under heavy pressure from the drug and advertising industries, the government backed down in the late 1990s, and that started the tsunami.
Spending on drug ads for the general public more than tripled between 1996 and 2001. It is now some $4 billion a year, which is more than twice what McDonald's spends on ads. In 1994, the typical American had seven prescriptions a year, which is no small number. By 2004, that was up to 12 a year. Homebuilders are touting medicine cabinets that are "triple-wide."
The industry says this is all about "educating" the consumer. But an ad executive was more candid when he said – boasted, really – that the goal is to "drive patients to their doctors." Reuters Business Insight, a publication for investors, explained that the future of the industry depends on its ability to "create new disease markets." "The coming years," it said, "will bear greater witness to the corporate-sponsored creation of disease."
The Kaiser study found that drug ads increase sales for entire categories of drugs, not just the one in question. The ads really are selling the disease more than a cure.
Advertising is just one way the industry has sought to accomplish this goal. It also funds patient advocacy groups such as Children With Attention Deficit Disorder (CHADD), and doctors who push for expanded definitions of disease, among a host of other things. (When the definition of ADD expanded in the 1980s, the number of kids tagged with this problem increased by 50 percent.)
But advertising is the most pervasive and aggressive way of selling sickness. It also is the hardest to justify. Medicine is supposed to be about science, not huckstering; about healing people, not persuading more of them that they are sick. There are far better ways to inform the public about health issues than to spend billions of dollars a year pushing pills.
This is why more than 200 medical school professors recently called for an end to prescription drug ads, and why close to 40 health and seniors groups have joined them. Even the American Medical Association, many members of which have close ties to the pharmaceutical industry, has urged restrictions. Washington should listen to these doctors. As Governor Pawlenty put it, we need to put "the decisionmaking back where it should be – on an informed basis between the patient and the doctor."
•Jonathan Rowe is issues director at Commercial Alert and a fellow at the Tomales Bay Institute. He is a former Monitor staff writer.
Copyright © 2006 The Christian Science Monitor
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Investing Advice for a Friend
Friend:
Eek! Don't like the sound of this. What do you think?
Mopey:
I've always felt that Liz Ann Sonders is dangerous.
She's right, we are possibly heading into a recession. But it's a maybe/maybe not situation, and it's also on the heels of a pretty big correction in a lot of stocks that tend to underperform badly leading up to and during a recession (cyclicals and cyclical/enterprise tech). If you look at the PG/MO/PFE complex of stocks (consumer products and pharma bellweathers) they've been outperforming pretty meaningfully for at least 6 weeks, if not more.
The whole point about the inverted yield curve is also coincident, if not lagging. The yield curve has been inverted for the last several months. Also everybody knows the Fed hiked rates too high and now the real question is how fast do we all go "flying through the windshield"--almost every recession in the last few decades has been caused by the Fed (this is not necessarily a bad thing by the way, but that sub-subject is fodder for another conversation).
The coming crash in housing has been predicted by almost EVERYBODY for a while now and my sense is that it's over-discounted in the market too. Punch up the key homebuilders (TOL, PHM, HOV) and you'll see what I mean... they are all down HUGE and have been down for a long time. Those might be potential buys in the next year or two, who knows.
There's one other REALLY key point that unfortunately she totally misses. The US is not the center of the universe anymore! There's a whole big world out there that is hungry for trucks, bulldozers, oil, cosmetics, cigarettes, banking, commodities, etc, etc. So maybe we shouldn't even get overly worked up over the US business cycle in the first place? Just a thought.
So my point is this: what she is saying is not insightful. It's factually accurate which is nice--but it's coincident information, not predictive. The market is already ahead of her! For another great example, take a look at Deere--construction equipment--it's already down 20 points from its local high set in early May.
This would have been a useful column three months ago. Now it's borderline dangerous.
What I'd be doing is try to look "through the valley"--meaning start thinking about the NEXT economic cycle. Look for some cyclical stocks that interest you or that you think are companies you'd like to own a piece of. DE might be a good one. Other possibilities could be UTX, GE, CAT (we've owned that one before and sold too early), HON (own it), etc. I'm working up a list of names to consider for myself.
Another idea is to buy more interest rate sensitive stocks, meaning banks (again maybe not right away but--again--let the price be your guide). The thinking here is everybody with money on the line already knows the economy is going to slow down, so let's start thinking about what happens AFTER that. Well, what happens is the Fed will cut rates. You know the list of names here...you already own some good ones. Keep them as possible ideas to add to if you can get your cost basis lower.
Keep in mind we don't know if there will be a recession for sure, or if there is one how long and deep it might be. So again, buy in bites and be patient.
Sorry for the longwinded response, but you really got me thinking over here! You should definitely keep reading this kind of stuff, but also be sure to think about where the "guru" might be wrong.
--Mopey
Eek! Don't like the sound of this. What do you think?
Mopey:
I've always felt that Liz Ann Sonders is dangerous.
She's right, we are possibly heading into a recession. But it's a maybe/maybe not situation, and it's also on the heels of a pretty big correction in a lot of stocks that tend to underperform badly leading up to and during a recession (cyclicals and cyclical/enterprise tech). If you look at the PG/MO/PFE complex of stocks (consumer products and pharma bellweathers) they've been outperforming pretty meaningfully for at least 6 weeks, if not more.
The whole point about the inverted yield curve is also coincident, if not lagging. The yield curve has been inverted for the last several months. Also everybody knows the Fed hiked rates too high and now the real question is how fast do we all go "flying through the windshield"--almost every recession in the last few decades has been caused by the Fed (this is not necessarily a bad thing by the way, but that sub-subject is fodder for another conversation).
The coming crash in housing has been predicted by almost EVERYBODY for a while now and my sense is that it's over-discounted in the market too. Punch up the key homebuilders (TOL, PHM, HOV) and you'll see what I mean... they are all down HUGE and have been down for a long time. Those might be potential buys in the next year or two, who knows.
There's one other REALLY key point that unfortunately she totally misses. The US is not the center of the universe anymore! There's a whole big world out there that is hungry for trucks, bulldozers, oil, cosmetics, cigarettes, banking, commodities, etc, etc. So maybe we shouldn't even get overly worked up over the US business cycle in the first place? Just a thought.
So my point is this: what she is saying is not insightful. It's factually accurate which is nice--but it's coincident information, not predictive. The market is already ahead of her! For another great example, take a look at Deere--construction equipment--it's already down 20 points from its local high set in early May.
This would have been a useful column three months ago. Now it's borderline dangerous.
What I'd be doing is try to look "through the valley"--meaning start thinking about the NEXT economic cycle. Look for some cyclical stocks that interest you or that you think are companies you'd like to own a piece of. DE might be a good one. Other possibilities could be UTX, GE, CAT (we've owned that one before and sold too early), HON (own it), etc. I'm working up a list of names to consider for myself.
Another idea is to buy more interest rate sensitive stocks, meaning banks (again maybe not right away but--again--let the price be your guide). The thinking here is everybody with money on the line already knows the economy is going to slow down, so let's start thinking about what happens AFTER that. Well, what happens is the Fed will cut rates. You know the list of names here...you already own some good ones. Keep them as possible ideas to add to if you can get your cost basis lower.
Keep in mind we don't know if there will be a recession for sure, or if there is one how long and deep it might be. So again, buy in bites and be patient.
Sorry for the longwinded response, but you really got me thinking over here! You should definitely keep reading this kind of stuff, but also be sure to think about where the "guru" might be wrong.
--Mopey
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
MMMB: another idea-let
Q: What's a married woman's definition of retirement?
A: Half as much money and twice as much husband.
I've always laughed at that one. Works on many levels. You spent your life not saving money or preparing for the future, AND to make matters worse you didn't "invest" in your relationship with your spouse either. Just let him earn the money and stay out of my hair. :)
A: Half as much money and twice as much husband.
I've always laughed at that one. Works on many levels. You spent your life not saving money or preparing for the future, AND to make matters worse you didn't "invest" in your relationship with your spouse either. Just let him earn the money and stay out of my hair. :)
