Are Pharmaceutical Corps. Ethical ?

Discussion in 'Chemistry' started by river, Aug 5, 2017.

  1. river

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    Mostly pharmas .
     
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  3. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    That's kinda my point.
    Our medicinal knowledge is still in its infancy. The pharmas cannot do more than our understanding permits.

    You speak as if they could do more. What makes you think we as a civilization have sufficient knowledge to do more?
     
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  5. river

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    No, pharmas do more than our understanding allows . Pharmas hope that you rely on them , for any medical problem .

    To your last statement , odd question , are you suggesting that we trust pharmas , completely and absolutely , no questions asked ?
     
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  7. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    No. you are making an assumption that they could cure stuff, but don't.

    What makes you think they can, but don't - as opposed to they simply can't because we can't do that yet.
     
  8. river

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    Think .
     
  9. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Ah, the swansong of the troll.

    Not that you are a troll, but trolls like to use the ridiculous defense of 'I am smart and you're just not thinking hard enough.'
    Don't be that troll.
     
  10. river

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    Its not about smart , my ego is not based upon what I know , and what others don't , ego is completely irrelevent.

    Just be informed .
     
  11. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    This coming from the guy who just declared that matter and energy are created all the time and that is the cause for the expansion of the universe?
     
  12. river

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    So this is more important than looking into the truth about pharmas ?

    Your priorities are juggled up in the wrong direction .
     
  13. superstring01 Moderator

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    What does that even mean? "Heal the brain"? A LOT of people are incapable of critically evaluating things like medicine and pharmaceutical companies because we live in an ecosystem of information that is unrefined where anybody can build a website and post articles that feed that ecosystem. Worse, because of confirmation bias (where your mind admits that which you like; disregards that which you don't), cherry picking (where you randomly select articles/facts out of the whole in an effort to buttress what you think) and a dash of Dunning-Kruger, we tend to believe we know and/or are more qualified than who we are. Like I tell people all the time in evaluating any matter they're considering:
    1. The truth resists simplicity. Everything is complex. No matter what you're looking at, there are layers and layers of critical details that are so pertinent that to actually be in possession of the relevant details you require to make an informed judgment, would make it roughly a full time job. That doesn't mean that you cannot form a general opinion (that's our right), but you have to build a box and put that opinion in it and acknowlede to the world, "This is just an opinion. I'm willing to throw it away the moment I know more." Which leads us to this fact:
    2. You have to be willing to admit this underlying aspect about yourself when using any critical, socratic or scientific process: Be prepared to humble yourself and say, "I was wrong." It's so simple, yet so emotionally difficult. I have a mantra that I say every day. I've rewritten it and reworded it to flow better. You may have your own. Here's mine:
      "My opinions are not me. They are just pieces of data that I carry in a box with me. I can add to them or remove them at any time. If I marry myself to my opinions, I'll cling to them regardless of what the facts tell me. I'll confuse those opinions with "the self", I will fight over those opinions even when they are wrong because admitting I was wrong —either to myself or someone else— is very humiliating. I fight that humiliation even when I know I'm wrong just so I can say that I'm right. I may even do harm or insult someone in defense of these things that I foolishly confused with "the self".

      That is dangerous. That is the path of deception and failure. This is not a recipe for being "wishy-washy" — but a philosophy of always being skeptical enough to investigate, and mature enough to understand when I'm wrong and admit it freely. I must always remind myself: If I want to be right, then I need to be prepared to change my mind."
    There isn't a single thing in life about which I'm unwilling to change my mind. To keep myself honest, I keep a list of all the times I've changed my mind. I celebrate being wrong. When you approach the matter of pharmaceutical companies or biogen companies, it's easy to get lost in the propaganda and allow your emotions to run away. To evaluate pharma companies, you have to structure rules and be honest to them:
    • Am I willing to change my mind?
    • What would it take to change my mind?
    • Will I feel ashamed and/or hide it if I had to change my mind?
    • How will I know when my process of investigation/discovery should end?
    • What qualifies an information source as reliable (not propaganda, well cited, etc.)?
    • Who is qualified to offer a scientific opinion? How will I verify their credentials?
    • Am I qualified to know the difference between what is true and what isn't?
    If you can't answer those questions, you're unlikely to get any real answers. You're probably going to engage in cherry picking and confirmation bias. You're prone to think you're more qualified than you are. You won't get the truth, you'll simply reinforce your existing beliefs, which is not healthy for you nor for those you associate with.

    In pursuing the truth, always base EVERYTHING on:
     
    Last edited: Aug 29, 2017
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  14. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    What makes you think there is some hidden "truth" to look in to?

    This is the problem with conspiracy theories; they are self-fulfilling.

    "The government is hiding evidence of UFOs!"
    "What makes you think so?"
    "Because we don't get any information; it's all classified."
    "Perhaps there's no information to give. That too is a plausible reason for us not getting any."
    "That's just what they want you to think!"

    See, there's no way to prove that some mega-org isn't hiding some fabricated dirty truth. It's an unfalsifiable accusation.
    You're aware of the same thing with the military and psychic research.

    This kind of conspiracy mentality is nurtured by a growing culture of ignorance.
     
  15. superstring01 Moderator

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    Sadly so true. And that's something most people don't get. Once they're married to that idea, it becomes a part of their identity. They shift the burden and offer Rube Goldberg mechanisms of logical fallacies capped off with, "Well, prove it isn't true." How the fuck can someone "prove" a negative?
     
  16. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Well said.
     
  17. superstring01 Moderator

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    ...never mind that "proof" only exists in mathematics, algebra and pure logic. We only ever have estimates with shrinking margins of doubt but rarely arriving at 100% in anything. We do a kind-of-sort-of inductive and abductive bit of logic, refine, test, refine and test until we get the margins of doubt within the comfort zone. The idea that big pharma is poisoning us or plotting against us makes me laugh. Right. They've kept it a secret despite employing hundreds of thousands of people around the world. The US government --the world's greatest trainer of secret keepers-- leaks like a goddamned sieve. But a private company somehow has a magic wall that keeps their people in line, in THIS the very Information Age when you can literally disseminate information to the entire world in less time than it takes Lt. Cdr. Data to sift through computer records looking for a mention of someone freezing to death in a shower.
     
  18. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Don't get me wrong - I don't think it's as outrageous as that.

    Any corporation is a collective of agendas. Their goal (among other more altruistic goals) is to make investors happy and stay in business (this is not a bad thing; it is what keeps an economy going). Goal is not a strong enough term; it is any business's obligation to be successful.

    It would take a visionary to see that an org's business goals are misaligned with its philanthropic goals, and make changes (changes that would ultimately affect the bottom line) to put philanthropic goals ahead of business goals. (This alignment has to be an active and ongoing process to push back against business drivers.)

    So, no one person or even group of persons is doing any wrong or being in any way dishonest, they are all manning their lines steering the boat conscientiously; it's just that they're sailing where they were told to. The question is: who has set the course?

    (There was a recent blowup of charities here, where it turned out that they were not being managed effectively ,and money was disappearing. It was not a conspiracy, just a mandate gone off the rails by lack of oversight and accountability.)

    So, I don't see that as utterly implausible in any organization that's large enough. I also don't feel the need to apply it, just because we individually have naive expectations of what kind of progress a corporation ought to be making in our naive outlook.
     
  19. superstring01 Moderator

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    What isn't implausible is that the low lying fruit in biology has been plucked. Humans --without genetic engineering, nano-tech and some crazy drugs-- have reached a "more or less their max age" range. We're talking roughly 80-85. Even before the age of modern medicine, if you made it to adulthood (16-ish), you could expect a life into your 50s. (Even in ancient Rome, old 80 year old ladies and men weren't obscenely rare). The "people died at 38" dreck was because of infant mortality. But we're living older now because the really juicy things that get us here, sanitation, anti-biotics and pain relievers (which allow us to stay a bit more active and thus healthier) have done what they're gonna do.

    Yes, there are cures for diseases waiting to be found, but they're more or less going to add a tiny fraction to our age limit, not get us to 150 or something. But MOST of what ails us is circumstantial:
    • Over-eating causing obesity.
    • Living longer means eventually your DNA will get a chance to break down and cause cancer (this is why --statistically-- cancer is a disease of the elderly).
    • Smoking/drinking causing cancer and other complications.
    • Unprotected sex.
    Remove those factors and we're STILL going to die --on average-- in the 80's. It's not that "there's nothing left to cure", it's that the curable/preventable infections have largely been cured/prevented. Influenza cycles between humans birds and pigs and mutates, so cycles of it will return annually. What else is there? AIDS, from simians and sexually transmitted. We can go down the list but we've mostly eliminated epidemics (one of three great human scourges: war and famine being the other three). So we're left with an entire industry dedicated explicitly to working on the fringes of disease treatment. Alzheimers? It wasn't even a "thing" 100 years ago. People just called it "getting old" or "dimentia".

    This is good. I'm a fan of medicine (I'm married to an ICU nurse who's studying to become an NP focused on neurological trauma). I'm happy we're doing this. But what's mostly left in our medical care is taking care of our self-inflicted wounds through lifestyle choices, getting people proper coverage to take care of issues early on and --of course-- relieving pain.

    .......

    In my case, I'm 42, I'm on a cocktail of medicines that are SOOOOOO "first world":
    • Cialis because I love to fuck.
    • Androgel because I love to fuck and I have low T.
    • Lunesta because I'm a restless sleeper (once in a while).
    • Gabapentin (the new version: Horizant) because of RLS and a past spine injury that leaves me with lingering pain in my right arm.
    • FloNase for my allergies to the three cats I keep in my home.
    • Zyrtec for the allgergies to the three cats I keep in my home.
    • Aleve for the nerve pain.
    • Vitamin D because I don't consume dairy and I never go out in the sun.

    None of these would be considered problems a hundred years ago. They're just one more sign that I live in the decadent 2k's.
     
    Last edited: Aug 29, 2017
  20. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    So, for you, pharma is like a candy store?
     
  21. superstring01 Moderator

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    The fundamental purpose of our existence can be boiled down to axiomatic expressions that ONLY YOU can decide their priority:
    • Salience vs Ambiguity -- gaining a comprehensive understanding of our environment and removing ambiguity from our lives.
    • Pleasure vs Pain -- gaining joy/happiness/pleasure, avoiding pain/suffering where possible.
    Every single thing you do in life can be traced to those fundamental impulses, whether it's planting your seed in a vagina (or getting a seed planted in yours, if you will), to learning the complexities of Quantum Mechanics. All that we do comes from fundamental impulse (accumulated through eons of evolution) to gain salience and pleasure while avoiding ambiguity and pain.

    Everything you do in life is "a candy store". I'm comfortable admitting to my fundamental programming and living my one and only life in such a way that maximizes my happiness while staying true to my fundamental moral values that, well, I cannot also deny stem from those fundamental impulses as well.
     
  22. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    My fundamental programming changed when I was in the army. I had some 'issues' which led the medics, doctors, and shrinks to load me up on anti-psychotic , mood elevating and muscle relaxing drugs...........the damned things almost killed me, and here's the kicker..........................they cured nothing. Only when I examined and then altered my fundamental programming did I regain control of me..... Maybe I owe that moment of clarity to some asshole Major who went out of his way to harass me?
    So, perspective matters, ever since then I have had a somewhat negative view of pharmaceuticals.
     
  23. superstring01 Moderator

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    That's an anecdotal fallacy. You're experience is 100% relevant and it's yours and your opinion is valid. But it's ONLY valid in so far as your unique experience and how you've been mistreated. It's not a cookie-cutter experience that can be applied to others even if you decide to cherry pick others who've had similar experiences to you. With that said, even if I agreed that there's something to what you said, all we might come to the conclusion on are these options:
    • You had terrible doctors.
    • Psychological medication sucks and shouldn't be used.
    • Your mind neuro-chemistry wasn't a good match for those drugs.
    Again. Your experience is perfectly valid. But it's only valid in telling what went wrong. It's not a really useful metric for a wide-ranging hasty generalization that damns an entire industry in the process. My step mom died of cancer this past February. She died because she voluntarily went on a trial to help boost her immune system to fight the cancer. Had she stayed on traditional meds, she'd probably still be here. But she did a trial and died. Her horrible experience sucks, but it was her choice.

    Last, but not least, while your psychological experience was obviously pretty harrowing, that does not have anything to do with me taking boner meds or increasing my T count or taking drugs to suppress my RLS, all of which have had pretty damned near perfect results. As with all things -- YMMV.
     

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