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To: gusopol3
your entire presentation throughout has been ad hominem.

No, it hasn't. An ad hominem argument is when you attempt to refute a factual statement by attacking the character of the person delivering the message. If I call you arrogant in an attempt to refute a factual statement, that's ad hominem. It means to attack the man, not the message. Even if the attack is true -- maybe you really are arrogant, for example -- it still doesn't mean your facual statement is incorrect. The character of the person delivering the message does not change the factuality of the message. The message still needs to be refuted on its own grounds. So maybe you hate me -- fine, I don't care. But the facts are the facts are the facts...

The critique of the influence of big pharmaceutical companies on psychiatry is not an ad hominem. It's a point of fact, that can be easily verified. It can be verified, for example, by the large sums of money pharmaceutical companies spend attempting to sell their drugs to medical doctors, using tactics that maximize the benefits of the drugs, and minimize the side effects. Read about it for yourself here, for example.

And now the courts have agreed that it is criminal to sell drugs for off-label uses -- and Lilly is paying out $1.4 Billion to prove it. This is the largest fine ever paid by a pharmaceutical company. Why? Because it's not right to pay off doctors to prescribe drugs to populations that are highly likely to be damaged by them simply to make a profit. That's a moral statement. You can disagree with the morality of the issue -- and claim that this is an okay thing to do. But you can't dispute that this is what has been happening. The facts are the facts.


86 posted on 01/30/2009 5:59:10 PM PST by bdeaner (The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? (1 Cor. 10:16))
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To: bdeaner
because it's not right to pay off doctors to prescribe drugs to populations that are highly likely to be damaged by them simply to make a profit.

there you go again. A totally ad hominem embellishment of even what Lilly was fined for. They were fined for a marketing practice , not any result of having used the medication in an off-label manner. "Paying off doctors" -- clearly your high sense of morality pays the ninth commandment no heed.

97 posted on 01/31/2009 5:25:28 AM PST by gusopol3
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