Which is worse, the pharmaceutical industry or the supplement industry?

Pharma doesn’t get people addicted to opiates. People get themselves addicted to opiates.

People are harmed by supplements by not doing their homework and looking for cheap, easy solutions to problems that most often require more sleep, more exercise, a better diet and less caffeine, alcohol, cigarettes, weed, OTCs, or whatever.

But many people would rather believe a pill will solve their problems. And thus, they pay the price, the consequences of which they usually find another pill to relieve and so on, and so on.

Both industries have their cons and unethical behaviours, but it is up to you to not be one of the suckers that are born every minute.

@Espiritus_Corvus Fair enough. The individualist arguments will always exist, but don’t you ever look at policy on a macro level? If there were fewer opiates perscribed, fewer people would become addicted. If the FDA had the power to regulate the supplement industry, fewer people would be inadvertently poisoned. Do you really believe we should always accept the status quo? When was the “right” status quo created and how do you know it’s right?

@Smashley

I was an RN for 23 years. Opiates are often unnecessarily prescribed by unethical doctors. The FDA doesn’t efficiently regulate the supplemental industry. You live in a country where “right” is bought. Those are the facts. So, it is up to each individual to look after themselves and educate their friends and loved ones.

Period.

Fuck the status quo. Think for yourself.

@Espiritus_Corvus cool, bro.

Excellent job waving away the problem. The pharmaceutical and supplement industries thank you for your service. Somebody needs to protect their freedom from the powerful addict lobby pushing everybody around.

Big Herba is owned by Big Pharma: Two faces of the same coin. Alt med people are being duped by marketing.

Well, thank goodness for pharmaceutical thyroid medication, or I’d probably be dead. I also take Rx vitamin D and it’s a tremendous help. I take OTC iron, but if it didn’t exist there would be an Rx I could take.

It’s scary that supplements are unregulated.

Both pharmaceutical and supplements have some companies that take advantage of people, and both have their players that lack ethics. Some are truly bad in every sense of the word. Some have good missions and provide real help for people without gouging them.

Overall, the US has a pretty screwed up system for pharmaceuticals though. It’s one of the few if not only country that accompany losing its patent can pay off or buy a generic company that wants to produce the drug. There are all sorts of loopholes to extend parents. The citizenry fit the most part just sits back and accepts that drugs are expensive and just watched the prices go up.

Opiate addiction is an epidemic, snake oil salesmen say whatever they want, life saving medicine has had overnight price hikes in excess of 1000% If people can’t see a larger more systemic problem with pharma and alternative meds then we have truly arrived at idiocracy.

They both have their up and downsides but in general my opinion is that the supplement industry is worse.

They’re on opposite extremes of the regulation scale. Pharma moves very very slowly due to the formalization around drug trials and getting new medications approved for market. There are also some horrible players on the field who think it’s fun to play games with people’s lives for profit – the Martin Shkrelis of the world. In pharma, by the time a drug hits the market, you know it’s probably pretty safe and pretty effective, but it also probably costs you an arm and a leg and it probably showed up 20 years too late to help you.

Supplements on the other hand are completely unregulated which means you have no idea what one might do to you when you take it! It could be harmful (not very common but it happens), it could be completely ineffective (common), but I think people are drawn to the feeling of control they gain from trying this stuff given that you don’t need a prescription and it’s usually relatively cheap. Problem is you’re probably not going to find anything that will actually help you. Soooo what’s the point. A lot of slimey people in this business too, making money off of sick people’s hope and desperation.

So pharma is the industry that’s actually helping people for the most part, and I think that deserves some kudos despite their flaws. I’d certainly be dead if not for “big pharma.” But I wish there could be something in the middle that could get help to people faster by skipping some of the formal process in the case of people who are sufficiently desperate. I guess that’s what the right to try movement is about, though in my opinion it should extend past just the terminally ill. The company I work for does some work in this area too – we gather enough data from people who are trying shit that we’re sometimes able to show whether people are having statistically significant results long before a formal drug trial ever would – granted, without the controls of a true experiment.

As for opioids, my gripe with that isn’t that they’re being prescribed – if this is the only approved thing we have that is effective for pain, I’d prefer we prescribe them than not, it’s better than just making people live with their pain – but rather that we aren’t being open to getting alternative pain-relief medications through trials and out there – cannabis, for one.

@gorillapaws Not all med people are duped, by any means. But to rage strongly and vociferously against the machine may mean a loss of professional license and therefpre the loss of the ability to do any good at all. So, many of us quietly join and support specific professional associations that are lobbying, fighting for changes in the system. There is safety in numbers.

@gorillapaws Oops. Presbyopia strikes again. I read that as all, not alt. Sorry.

Not all supplements are owned by big pharmaceutical companies. @gorillapaws

The FDA never has had anyone’s health as its priority. In general, I’m for the supplement industry, and against big pharma, although both have their problems. When I buy supplements, I always do my homework. I find out who owns a particular brand, and its history. I look at where the product is harvested and how it’s processed too.

Whether it’s medication or a supplement, I know when to take it,, how much, and when it’s not safe to take it. I’ve learned from long experience to double check advice, whether it’s from an MD or a naturopath. In other words, I take full responsibility for my own health.

There’s more to it than that, but this is the short version.

I agree both have their place but yes, the supplement industry is wide open and not well regulated. I know a supplement addict right now, this woman must spend $500.00 a month on various crap and is always on some new jag promoting something she has “discovered.” The latest, some weight loss supplement that if loaded with caffeine and god knows what else. She isn’t even really overweight, could maybe drop 15 lbs. She told me the other day that it was making her feel nauseated and I said that was probably the idea, nausea as an appetite suppressant. LOL

The only supplements I take are a vitamin immune booster and glucosamine. I hate taking pills and do not understand these people that swallow 30 pills a day. I do think the Opioid crisis has ruined it for those of us non-abusers that might need pain meds on a rare basis. case in point. I feel on my face a year or so ago and really hurt myself. Wracked up my arm/shoulder, severely sprained my ankle, hurt my wrist and my doctor refused to give me anything, told me to take Advil.

Pissed me off, as I hadn’t requested pain meds, EVER, for anything but something a little stronger than freaking Advil was in order but not issued because there is such abuse of these drugs.

I am in favor of any industry who produces a medical product that has been shown to be effective in peer reviewed placebo controlled double blinded randomized controlled trial that has gone through Bayesian statistical prior probability filters.

There are several worthwhile ways to look at these issues. It’s certainly not just “is the pharma industry worse than the supplement industry?”.

Letting profit-driven thinking drive decisions for medicine is always going to lead to conflicts with what’s actually a beneficial thing for people other than investors and the power/wealth of organizations, and if benevolence isn’t the rule, people are going to get screwed for the sake of “profits”.

Better non-corporate education for people could go a long way to help protect people from pitfalls of product misuse/abuse/etc. So could more examples in our fiction/media.

@Zaku – I agree, there are several ways to look at the issue, but I felt that since many people instinctively fall into one camp or another, it was a useful mechanism to twist people’s prejudices.

@snowberry – consider that your research is not necessarily conclusive. There is a cottage industry of alt med misinformation out there, which in many cases the overwhelms any google search and looks like “consensus.” Consider also that lack of regulation means that there is often little or no independent assessment of any of the claims of safety or even of the contents of the bottle. You may feel satisfied, but you’re really just trusting reputation, which isn’t everything. VW used to have a good reputation.

@Rarebear – yes, but not all products meet these requirements. The FDA has much flexibility in their approval standards depending on their perception of society’s need for it, which is more of a political/rhetorical assessment than a scientific one, and thus susceptible to lobbying.

@Smashley I never once mentioned the FDA. I’m talking about science.

The FDA absolutely is concerned with health. WTH?! For sure it has its problems, and a little too much good ol’ boy friendships behind the scenes, but it’s still better than no regulation or no scientific rigors. Being completely negative about a government agency that helps keep American safe is mind boggling to me. We need to make the FDA better, and get rid of the problems in the agency, but I believe holeheartedly that most scientists working there care about the public health, and that the main mission is health. Money and politics screws it up a little, like everything.

Sssssure the FDA is concerned with my health. That’s why I get to watch all these TV ads for medical devices and medications that were approved by the FDA, and how wonderful they are, then I get to see more ads on how the same product or medicine is why you’re sick, or died, etc. so hurry and call an attorney so you can sue them.

Big brother has my back for shore.

@snowberry LOL I know. I was just put on a new med last week for some endocrinology testing coming up. Made the mistake of reading the side effects, possible heart attack, mysterious rashes, receding gums, swelling of ankles, on & on. The cure is worse than the condition half the time. haha

@Rarebear – ah. Forgive me, I just assumed you were talking about the more scientific pharma industry which cannot be separated from FDA policy (at least in this country).

@Coloma – careful. “Half the time” is a testable claim, and I very much doubt its accuracy.

You can avoid the sarcasm. I am talking about science. There are plenty of “alternative medicine” that have been proven to work. I am agnostic on the issue. If something is proven to work, I am okay with it.

@Rarebear – I do avoid it. It never comes through properly on the internet, for me at least. I think we’re failing to communicate, and only slightly disagree, if at all. Was it the italics?

@snowberry – that’s reductionist to a fault. The FDA does approve things that aren’t safe for 100% of people, and it approves some things that aren’t rigorously proven to be effective, but they are also in the ineviable position of being the gatekeepers of medicine.

For example: if a new treatment is 15% effective against a killer disease and 5% deadly to the patient, they are tasked with deciding if it should go out, thus killing people, or be withheld, thus killing people. Sometimes a drug is promising, but not rigorously studied. Should people die while we wait for more testing? It’s not easy, and the FDA is certainly underfunded for the task at hand.

As for the ads, those are manufacturers pushing them, and lawyers railing against. Both groups, I might add, who were once barred from advertising on tv.

Nothing tops the pharmaceutical industry when it comes to straight up economic villainy. American pharma surpasses even the banks and insurance companies in the legalized and even compulsory gouging of American consumers.

@stanleybmanley legalized and even compulsory gouging of American consumers

…And the government, especially and specifically Medicare. According to Bloomberg Intelligence (as cited by Business Insider):

…Medicare Part D accounts for 30% of biotech companies’ gross sales, 25% of large pharma companies’ gross sales, and 20% of specialty pharma gross sales…

They work in concert. @Strauss and @stanleybmanly.

they work in concert because the Congress has mandated that they must. The bought and payed for Congress has forbidden medicare from negotiating a FAIR price for pharmaceuticals. It is the clearest case you will ever see of legislation openly against the public interest.

@Smashley I apologize, I was reading too much into it. I know better than that.

Anyway, the FDA does the best it can given current science at the time. There have been many drugs that the FDA has withdrawn because the science subsequently has shown for it not to be good, and the organization has approved drugs based upon bad science.

It’s important to understand that the FDA is not a science organization, it’s an administrative organization. It has scientists who review literature but it’s up to the doctor to determine whether the science is any good. We use the FDA for guidance but I use “off label” medications all the time. Why? Because the science is good.

I also use so-called “alternative” medications when the science is good. Do you know what we call alternative medicine that has been proven to work? Medicine. (I stole that line—it was from Tim Minchin’s Storm single).

@snowberry As much as I hate the money spent by pharma on advertising, I actually don’t mind medicine being directly advertised to the end user. Doctors aren’t always up on all the medications available for a certain ailment. Now, with the internet, we can more easily research what is available, so the advertising is less necessary (necessary not being the right word really) but still I don’t think the advertising is all bad, I have mixed feelings.

Plus, add in everything @Rarebear said just above me here. I agree with him.

One day, God forbid, you or a loved one will be saved or helped tremendously by an FDA approved medicine or medical device, I wouldn’t be so negative if I were you. I would love for a natural remedy to cure my thyroid, but for now the drug I take for my thyroid keeps my heart at a normal rhythm and rate, my blood pressure from escalating, most of my hair in my head, my eyes sufficiently moistened, I don’t need to sleep 12 hours a day, and it prevents a goiter from growing. Like I said, I’m pretty sure I would be dead without it.

Your natural remedies, well for them also, there is a percentage of natural remedies and suppleness that are completely ineffective and/or dangerous. It’s not like everything natural is all good and safe and effective. Cocaine is natural. Being naive and idealistic about natural remedies isn’t good, hopefully you aren’t. Plus, as @Rarebear said, many natural remedies become FDA approved medicine, and then it’s regulated. The 20mg pill actually has to have 20mg give or take a small percentage. The supplements can be way off in how much is actually contained in that pill you swallow.

I can name for you many, what I would call, screw ups, by the FDA, but they learn from them and change policy to improve. Still, they are the only agency keeping capitalistic medicine makers in check. No one is keeping what you promote in check, so the consumer should be more wary, not the other way around.

The FDA does not push drugs, the companies that manufacture them do, and that’s true regarding the pharmaceutical industry or supplement industry.

@JLeslie my daughter is an RN. She thought very much like you do, and we have argued back and forth for years about this. Then she began having trouble with her joints. Her physicians had absolutely no idea how to help her, and she worked with and went to the best in the city. It was getting so bad we were beginning to be concerned that she would be permanently disabled.

The short story is that as a last resort she agreed to go to my naturopath. She put her on certain supplements and her joints work normally again. My RN daughter has broadened my understanding of how useful medicine can be, and she has a new understanding of how alternative medicine and supplements have their place in health care.

As I’ve mentioned here on Fluther before, my life has been saved by medicine, but I’ve received about as much harm as good in the long run. It’s a mixed bag. Trust big pharma and the FDA? Not a chance. Likewise neither will I place all my trust in the people who make supplements. Everyone is in it to make money.

That said, I still prefer to use diet and supplements based on the recommendations of my naturopath, which I then research on my own. Had I followed the recommendations of my various physicians, I’d have had a hysterectomy, and other surgeries, and be on a couple of hands full of medications, much like many of my friends at my age.

I’m healthy without all that.

@snowberry That sounds more like a doctor problem than anything. The FDA did not prescribe a drug to your daughter, nor did that agency push her doctor to do it.

It’s not necessarily only individual doctors, but the medical training itself I also have some problems with. Medical doctors typically get very little education in pharmacy. They also tend to be healthier than the average population from what I can tell, I don’t know the actual statistics on that. Some doctors have a much more open mind and spend more time than the average doctor reading up on studies and information about supplements.

An example: I’ve gone back and forth about vitamin D on Q’s with doctors and lay people. I know doctors w@snowberry That sounds more like a doctor problem than anything. The FDA did not prescribe a drug to your daughter, nor did that agency push her doctor to do it.

It’s not necessarily only individual doctors, but the medical training itself I also have some problems with. Medical doctors typically get very little education in pharmacy. They also tend to be healthier than the average population from what I can tell, I don’t know the actual statistics on that. Some doctors have a much more open mind and spend more time than the average doctor reading up on studies and information about supplements. They also “test” supplements effectiveness on their own patients within reason. I see this clearly with my vitamin D experience.

Some doctors get money from pharmaceutical companies, and it has been shown to influence their prescribing habits. That is not the FDA’s fault, although it would be nice if we had laws against it.

I see you are not completely negative about western medicine, all I’m saying is I think you are being critical of the FDA for things that is not the agencies fault or job.

One example I do blame the FDA is the original prescribing for Ambien. The agency chose to ignore the results in female test subjects when the final prescribing information was given a rubber stamp. Years later they fixed it, after a lot of women had very bad side effects from what now would be considered overdosing. The data had always been there from original testing. An FDA representative said that doctors should be prescribing the lowest effective dose anyway, which I agree with. Still, I feel the FDA bears responsibility for knowingly ignoring the data.

“That sounds more like a doctor problem than anything. The FDA did not prescribe a drug to your daughter, nor did that agency push her doctor to do it.”

So are you saying that she should have hunted around until she found a doctor to prescribe her some medication that would “cure” her? (All the medications I read about don’t cure people, and there are always always a host of side effects, many of them horrible.) And even though she had her pick of the best doctors around, and they were all mystified? And even considering that she was looking at being disabled? She just needed to keep going down the same path instead of looking elsewhere, huh? Proper nutrition and appropriate supplements are never as good as a prescription! Alrighty then!

Try doing an internet search for “vitamins depleted by” (insert X prescription here). When is the last time you had a doctor explain that prescription he/ she was prescribing for you was going to deplete you of a certain vitamin, and what supplements to take to help?

@ARE_you_kidding_me I agree. The problems with pharma and supplements certainly seem like converging problems under some larger issue. I mostly blame a growing distrust of authority and the rise of moral/factual relativism. Come to think of it, these are foundations of a lot of problems.

@snowberry No, I didn’t say any such thing. I am not saying she needs to hunt down a doctor to get the right pharmaceutical medicine. You said yourself there doesn’t seem to be a pharmaceutical that can cure her. That has nothing to do with the FDA.

She did need to keep hunting until she found the person, whether it be a doctor or friend who wound up helping her. Sometimes it is a drug that has not been tried. Sometimes it’s diet, or supplements, or something else. Again, not the FDA’s fault. You might think more about blaming the AMA, or how doctors are trained, or how information is disseminated to doctors, or maybe we should have more funding for testing supplements, or changing the entire medical system so it is not based on a profit model.

Ok, but why fix what isn’t broken? She doesn’t have a problem anymore as long as she takes the supplement.

If she’s better she’s better. I’m saying while she was in the process of hunting for a cure she had to go to another doctor, ask friends, research, etc.

I don’t go back to rheumatologists or neurologists for my muscle troubles, I just take vitamin D.

Remember, @JLeslie she is an RN. She works with doctors in a hospital. She knows medicine and she knows what options there are. She did go to doctors about the problem, as I said before.. Everybody she talked to was mystified by her symptoms. But now we have the problem resolved. But it wasn’t resolved by a prescription written by a doctor.

@snowberry I have no problem with that. I’m not pushing prescriptions in any way shape or form. I am saying don’t idealize natural or supplement regimens. I absolutely believe the supplements cured her, I don’t question her results. It worked for her, maybe works for 90% of sufferers with her condition, it might be extremely effective, but there is a whole bunch of shit faux science out there and snake oil salesmen, so buyer beware.

I don’t like that a lot of doctors prescribe pills very easily, and in my perception many doctors are dismissive about side effects and allergies too often. My biggest gripe though is not knowing the full breadth of prescription options, or simply being relucatant to try a different drug when the patient is having bad side effects.

When my rheumatologist diagnosed me with fibromyalgia, he said he didn’t want to prescribe me any medicines, because he doesn’t like the side effects. I didn’t agree with his diagnosis, but that is besides the point. This is a doctor who went along with prescribing me three different antibiotics over a 6 month period when other doctors wouldn’t.

I don’t blame the FDA, the AMA, or any organization. It is what it is. And they all have their hands in each other’s back pockets. They work in concert, and very rarely does the consumer come out ahead in the deal. Do I trust big brother, big pharma, the FDA, the AMA, or any other organization or government entity to look out for my health? Not likely!

@JLeslie It’s always buyer beware, in medicine, in used car sales (edit but thank God for lemon laws, that helps!), and in everything else in life. If you buy a gallon of milk and when you get it home it’s sour, you can get your money back. But if a dentist screws up your mouth and your health, you’re basically screwed. I’ve lived through that nightmare and so has another daughter of mine. She had to go without desperately needed dental care caused by the first dentist because she had to pay him off before she could scrape together the money to pay the next guy.

It’s the same way if I go to an MD who misdiagnosed me. I don’t get my money back, I just have to suck it up and try to find someone who can help me.

@snowberry I’m not sure of the specifics to your case, but you definitely can sue a doctor who harms you either directly or through negligence. Doctors usually carry loads of malpractice insurance for just such eventualities. I expect there are many more law firms specializing in these cases than for crummy car and spoiled milk.

Yeah, that’s great if you can deal with the stress of litigation. She couldn’t, and doubly so after being traumatized and having her health wrecked.

She checked with her primary care doc. He didn’t think she would win anyway, but her health progressively deteriorated as she took massive amounts of OTC pain killer (dentist wouldn’t prescribe painkiller), he repeatedly traumatized her and her teeth as he botched one “repair” after another, as well as months and months of antibiotics. To top it off, she has PTSD from it all.

They also conned her into using Carecredit, which turned out to be misrepresented to her (of course she was in agony at the time so she couldn’t read or understand the fine print). Bottom line, it was designed so she didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of paying it off by herself. The rest of it was paid off by different family members before the 6 month cutoff when the interest skyrocketed. It was a nightmare.

18 months later she is finally seeing a professional dentist, and having a lot more work done than was originally necessary.

As I said, buyer beware.

I had a similar experience, but I was very young, and by the time I realized what that dentist had done it was too late.