I finally won GTA- San Andreas. There are still a million sub missions to complete but for the most part, I’m free from the games clutches. I will not play another game until they come out with another GTA game and will concentrate on my blog, writing back e-mails to friends in good time and really try to create a decent design for the blog.
If you read this blog, it may seem I complain a lot. I am not a negative person, it’s just that my day to day life here in Saigon now seems ordinary and I just feel it’s not interesting to write about. A friend of mine told me that it may not be interesting for me, but people who do not live here would find it interesting. So I will try to make an effort to write about the happenings here….. but not yet.
My rant of the day concerns the medication of America. Browsing the news today I came across this article. “Adult use of ADHD medicines surges” and then was dumbfounded when I read these paragraphs.
“ADHD symptoms include impulsivity, trouble concentrating, disorganization, procrastination and hyperactivity.”
– This describes approximately 80% of the people I know.
“The increased medication use is good because, along with behavioral therapy, it can improve adults’ relationships, job performance, parenting skills, even their sex lives.”
– Why am I not on this medication!!!!
“Whenever you get someone with ADHD diagnosed and treated successfully, everyone wins.”
– I can imagine the patient jumping up and cheering, “Yes I have ADHD!!!”
“Spending on ADHD medicines has shot up with the growing popularity of new, brand-name versions that last all day, limiting ups and downs of symptoms.”
– I sure feel sorry for those losers who take the generic drugs. I can imagine daily banter going from “Oh, how I admire your brand name running shoes.” to “Wow, you are on (insert brand name drug)!!! I wish I could afford such high class drugs as you.”
Seriously though, what the hell is going on in America. It seems the drug industry wants to medicate all of America and anyone who has any sort of emotion at all needs to be medicated. This is ridiculous.
Well, as one who works in the drug industry, I’m typically for the introduction of new drugs and the push for generic drugs to hit the market as soon as the brand’s patent expires. Why? In the big picture, brand name drugs are wonderfully profitable for the drug industry, meaning they have significantly more money to put into researching new life-saving drugs. Then, when the drugs go generic, the costs to the uninsured/gov’t drop dramatically, thusly increasing the ability for everyone to get treatment.
That being said, their are certainly excesses. One of the things the brand companies do is take their brand name drug, modify it slightly, and then start promoting how much better it is than the generic that just hit the market – when the biggest difference is typically convenience (I have to take 1 pill instead of 4). Then, on top of that, the new drugs may have the same basic efficacy as the older drug – but with different side effects (the old one causes ‘sexual’ side effects, the new one causes ‘psychotic’ side effects.). Also, brand companies will launch lawsuit after lawsuit to delay the launch of the drug generically, just to hold on to those profits for a bit longer. Good for business, bad for the immediate economy (sort of).
However, it’s worth noting that there are a smaller and smaller number of new drugs hitting the market right now and we’re on the cusp of a large number of generics hitting (something like $60 billion in sales over the next few years), so there’s going to be a swing towards generics. However, keep watching the biopharmaceutical market as this is likely the next exploding medical field.