The absurdity of it all

General Discussion
#1

Recently I was thinking about what generally occurs if one has a bad customer service at a hotel or at a restaurant. For example, if undercooked or rotten food is served. The establishment in question is humble and offers something complimentary and the staff responsible are reprimanded. The issue is resolved and the customer moves on with their life.

But when it comes to completely destroying a customer’s life with a drug, whereby one’s emotional capacity, sexuality and the essence of their being is ruined there is nothing. Zero. Nada. Responsible doctors won’t even be expected to be yelled at. Instead they will smirk and with indignity claim the patient is imagining things. And to add insult to injury, despite it being so obvious and apparent the drug is responsible there isn’t even an explanation. Victims are left to try to figure it out themselves and pave the way for a return to normality through a cure in the distal future.

The disproportionality of it all couldn’t be more insane.

What a fucking joke

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#2

Absurd is the right word. I’ve been half-expecting that someone would show up at my door and tell me that the whole thing was just an elaborate prank.

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#3

Yeah, it’s definitely a bizarre situation.

It just goes to show that there are no systems in place for this type of situation. You’d think that if there were literally thousands of reports of adverse reactions from the exact same drug with a strongly overlapping symptom profile, there would be some kind of agency that notices this and say ‘hey, this might be a serious public health issue, this should initiate some kind of further inspection and we need to get some adequate people involved’.

What I also think is very strange, is that these places where you can report your adverse reactions, don’t publicly show statistics of which drugs are causing which problems in patients. I just don’t see why that information shouldn’t be completely transparent. Would that be prone to abuse or hysteria or something?
Because I think you’d really need to actively “collect” these adverse drug events from these agencies all around the world to really be able to even come up with a statistic overview.
Like is there any agency or governmental body that actively monitors these adverse drug reports at all? Or are they just ‘lying there in case someone happens to be interested enough to request some data’, or something.

I mean, if I was interested in taking a drug and if I knew that there was a legitimate website or something where I could simply check out patient reports, then maybe I would, as a consumer, have a much more accurate image of the shit I’m about to ingest, instead of just having faith in the prescription label, the doctor’s advice, and whatever the pharmaceutical company wants you to believe.

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#4

The sad thing for me is that I googled it and looked at drugs.com AFTER I took it for 4 days. When I read the reviews of the drug I immediately stopped realising that this drug was not at all the harmless safe drug the dermatologist presented it as.

I will never understand why he was so nonchalant about the risk involved when I asked about potential side effects. Obviously I asked about side effects because they were a concern for me. To tell me the only risk would be a “slight drop in libido” which would go away after stopping the drug and that I could try it for 30 days is incomprehensibly irresponsible.

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#5

@Wintermoon, yeah, you would think there would be some type regulatory agency that actively looks out for this type of thing and warns the public.

When the rate of certain adverse effects reports indicates a problem, we get to hear some form of “correlation does not equal causation” ad infinitum as a rationale for ignoring the statistical evidence.

Pertains more to Accutane, but I don’t know how derms justify telling kids that side effects of a drug that is touted as a potential lifelong “cure” for acne will definitely go away after the drug is stopped.

Informed consent is a joke.

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#6

The US has exactly that, unfortunately it is limited to vaccines:

…the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a national early warning system to detect possible safety problems in U.S.-licensed vaccines…co-managed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). VAERS accepts and analyzes reports of adverse events (possible side effects) after a person has received a vaccination. Anyone can report an adverse event to VAERS. Healthcare professionals are required to report certain adverse events and vaccine manufacturers are required to report all adverse events that come to their attention.

So, why haven’t they created the same system for all drugs?

Jim

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#7

I often think about this. Since the anti-acne is originally a side effect, as Accutane was originally developed to treat a certain kind of cancer.

And if that anti-acne side effect is “permanent” why wouldn’t other side effects possibly also be permanent?

It’s not even really something that’s up for debate imo.

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#8

I had a post (two up from here) that was “hidden by community flag.”

Edit:
I’m not known to be a controversial poster. I’ve removed the paragraph that caused “offense.” Now back to the subject at hand… Jim

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#9

I didn’t report it but probably something to do with this. Under our circumstances I wouldn’t put anything past ‘Big Pharma’ but maybe throw a primary source in there.

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