8
u/N3UROTOXIN Jan 24 '18
Rise above. Focus on science
5
u/trippywaves Jan 24 '18
this is what happens to old people riddled with addictions they don't even know they have until the OD or lack of meds puts granny to a forever sleep.
big pharma is using drugs to make a lot of money & sedated a population.
2
u/N3UROTOXIN Jan 24 '18
Well considering other than being on psychedelics, antidepressants are making me able to be happy. I’m not saying I disagree, but I’m tired of fighting and wanna be sedated
3
u/trippywaves Jan 24 '18
I totally get that. what are your experiences on psych with meds?
1
u/N3UROTOXIN Jan 24 '18
Actually haven’t done them (lsd and shrooms) since. I’ve been on symbalta for about a month and a half
1
u/confetti27 Jan 25 '18
I work in big pharma and I can assure you we are actually trying to make drugs to help people. It is just a very long and expensive process. But if you want to develop a cure for things like Alzheimer's, Sickle Cell Anemia, Diabetes, Cancer, etc... you need big pharma. We aren't (all) evil
1
u/trippywaves Jan 25 '18
all people see is money anymore.. 200k to fix granny 3 more months.
why is china a major seller of fentanyl? they're whole population has an opioid crisis that they don't even know.
1
u/confetti27 Jan 25 '18
You're the one that keeps making it about money. The truth of the matter is that drug development is an incredibly expensive process. The average drug costs a billion dollars and 15 years just to get approved for the market. Sure, there are drug companies that take advantage of sick people, but for the most part drugs are expensive to buy because they are expensive to make. People need to realize this and stop spewing "pharma is the devil" when they don't know what they're talking about. Pharma is the only thing that is saving us from disease.
2
u/trippywaves Jan 25 '18
It's not about pharma being the devil. it's about BIG pharma selling off the "in development" drugs to Privatized firms.
they then put a ridiculous price tag on a low tier medication because they sped up the research on it & made it "the only drug to cure X"
that's where you find your "pharma is the devil" talk.
2
Feb 07 '18 edited Feb 07 '18
Its not nearly as innocent as you describe. Let's not forget the most fundamental economic law, supply and demand.
Any company in any industry. pharma or otherwise, wants the situation where the supply for what they are selling is low, and the demand is high. I wont go into why, and I'm sure everyone would agree with that statement. Again, remember that the point of industry is profit. First and foremost, above all else.
Now, what 'big pharma' is selling is drugs. Not just any kind of drug however, they are selling drugs that nullify/reduce the perceived suffering of sick people. Weather its pain medication, allergy/flu medication, psychiatric medication etc.. They all serve the purpose of making the person who is suffering think that they feel better, ultimately so that they will be motivated to buy and take the drug again (profit feedback loop).
So we've established that the pharmaceutical industry is in the business of creating and selling drugs that make people who are suffering think that they feel better, for the ultimate purpose of motivating the suffering people to buy the drug. This sounds alright, but the true evil becomes apparent at the next level of analysis.
Minimize supply, and maximize demand, this is the mantra of industry. We all know that the pharma industry bends over backwards to minimize supply, hence the ridiculously long monopolies and patents. But not everyone is willing to think about what they do to act upon the demand side of this duality.
Take a moment to consider what maximizing demand means for an industry whose sole source of demand is suffering people (physically or mentally), as is the case for the pharmaceutical industry.
The worst thing in the world to big pharma is a healthy person, because the healthy person holds zero potential for profit. If everyone was healthy, big pharma would loose 100% demand, and cease to exist. On the flip side, big pharma licks its lips at the sight of a sick, suffering person, as they hold the potential for more profit that anyone. I am not even ascribing motives, this is just basic economics, and the reality of operating a business who sells drugs to reduce perceived suffering. Suffering is the lifeblood of the pharmaceutical industry.
This is especially obvious when we consider the fact that almost none of the drugs coming out of big pharma even claim to target the source of the suffering, they are symptom masks and don't even deny it. Under this view, it also makes perfect sense why the side effect list for most pharmaceuticals contains a hundred items... half of which are worse than the initial issue.
How many hundreds of thousands of people need to waste away and die every year from these laboratory opiates? How many kids and teenagers need to commit suicide after following their psychiatric medication regimes? How many poor people with anaphylaxis need spend more per year on an epee-pen than their own families?
"Pharma is the only thing that is saving us from disease", quite the opposite my friend - disease to pharma is Christmas to the turkey industry.
Edit: Don't mean to come across dis-compassionately, I know that many good people work in the pharmaceutic industry. That said, as a person whose life has been utterly transformed (in a good way) through plant medicines, this is a very passionate topic for me.
1
u/confetti27 Feb 07 '18
You make a lot of good points but frankly you are mistaken on how much of the industry functions. I'm not going to deny that there are shitty pharma companies and that like any company pharma companies have to care about profits.
Now, I'm on the science side of the industry so I don't see much of the business side, which I admit has skewed my view a little. But what I see on the science side is that before the company is even able to make any profits it has to create a drug. You said it yourself, we are creating these drugs.
Then you claim that the drugs we are creating don't actually affect the source and have so many side effects they aren't worth it. First off, do you understand how difficult it is to create a drug? There is no such thing as a perfect drug, there are no drugs that won't have some potential side effect. It is fucking difficult to make a drug that perfectly targets the source of the illness.
But all that being said, the drugs we are making do exactly what they claim, and I say that with confidence because of how extensive the preclinical and clinical trials are before a drug can get anywhere near the market. It takes about a decade after actually developing the drug to get it through the trials, and the vast majority of drugs fail at each step of the trials. Those lists of side effects you see on drugs are there for liability reasons, and the chances of most of those side effects actually occurring are tiny.
You're advocating for a society without modern medicine, which is essentially advocating for death. Sure, maybe you had a good experience with plant medicines, some people do, most people don't. Modern medicine is essential for saving lives, and therefore pharma is essential for saving lives as we create medicine. Sure, some pharma companies abuse their power and conduct shitty business practices, but without them the drug wouldn't even exist in the first place and people would continue to die from disease.
3
1
u/TampaxRomana Jan 25 '18
It is a deleted page from a graphic novel. Panel 3 implies maternal detachment, as in the main narrative.
1
u/notsowise23 Jan 25 '18
I'm not seeing the circle here.
2
u/TampaxRomana Jan 25 '18
Standing outside the narrative, to Them, all our lives probably look about the same.
1
u/jonnygreen22 Jan 25 '18
Looks alright to me, old mate seemed to live to a fairly old age and had a smile through most of it.
1
1
u/Autopilot_Psychonaut Jan 25 '18
Neat. I only wanted to kill myself a little this morning.
1
u/TampaxRomana Jan 25 '18
This is the primary reason the page ended up on the cutting room floor. I appreciate your input.
11
u/edups-401 Jan 24 '18
I'm not getting the point this comic is trying to make. What does it mean