Name: Joe Rogan Experience #1756 - John Abramson
Uploaded: 2021-12-30T00:00:00.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1756 - John Abramson' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-12-30. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1756 - John Abramson' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-12-30. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #1756 - John Abramson

the Joe Rogan experience train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day
hello John Joe thanks for doing this man so this is obviously a subject that in
this current era is very intriguing and very important for people big pharma
and
this is the subject of your book how big pharma what is the the the heading
have
big pharma broke America is it okay I actually have a copy oh good because it's
not available I tried to get it in the they sent me copies of the audiobook but
it's in these weird wave files and when the you have to turn your screen off or
it shuts off the sound all right there you go sickening how big pharma broke
American health care and how we can repair it so how did they break American
health care what happened how did how we get so deep in and how is it that we're
one of only two countries on earth that allows pharmaceutical companies to
advertise well let's start with that question yeah let's do that so it's a the
United States and New Zealand allowed drug companies to advertise but New
Zealand has
very active oversight of its pharmaceutical program active oversight of the
evaluation
of the efficacy of the drugs and whether the pricing of the drugs is reasonable
so
it turns out that even though we in New Zealand allow drug advertising New
Zealand
spends the least per person amongst developed countries and we spend the most
by
far hmm so is has there ever been a conversation like whether it's publicly or
privately that you know of where they've tried to stop this is this one of
those
things that once it gets into play once there is a law that allows
pharmaceutical drug companies to sponsor or to advertise are we doomed then
because then the amount of money that's involved in advertising and when you
see
those brought to you by Pfizer those CNN commercials and when you see the
whether
it's for allergy medications or antidepressants the sheer volume of money
that's involved it seems like extracting that from our system would be very
difficult to manage because they're gonna fight tooth and claw to keep that in
absolutely so as best I understand it from from lawyers who do understand it in
our
Constitution the advertising of prescription drugs is falls under the free
speech mandate of our Constitution and some things you can control the
advertising of cigarettes and alcohol there's no beneficial use of those they're
not a they can be recreational but there's no absolute benefit to them but
with drugs there isn't an absolute benefit and they because of that they
qualify as protected under the First Amendment however that said the floodgates
were opened and it's clear that the drug company is going to spend as much
advertising however many billions of dollars they want to make as much money as
as they can but there's nothing that says the drug ads need to be allowed that
we
need to allow them to be misleading so you never seen a drug ad that you have
to
treat 323 people with trulicity for a year to prevent one cardiovascular event
they don't tell you that they tell you trulicity for diabetes prevents
cardiovascular events and
diabetics but if they said you have to treat 323 people to get one better and
the other 332 aren't going to have a cardiovascular benefit then you'd be
delivering information that people can use and if you said that you can't play
violins or have family picnics while you're reciting all the side effects then
people would listen to the side effects so I think the key is that the drug
companies know how to use the ads very skillful to manipulate people on an
emotional level and we don't have to settle for that we can have you want to
advertise drugs okay let's decide what facts need to be told about this is this
better than other therapies is this better than lifestyle intervention how much
does it cost how many people do you need to treat in order for one to get
better I
think if that information were included in the ads they'd be much less the the
the
the cost benefit of the ads would be reduced or the benefit cost ratio would be
reduced for the drug companies and then they wouldn't advertise so much but
right
now they can make these ads that make anything look great and make people want
them and make people go to their doctor and ask for them and they make a ton of
money yeah it just doesn't seem like it should have a place advertising in
terms
of the way they're advertising not just showing something in a print form like
we you know there is a new medication that stops you know the damages of high
blood pressure or whatever it is what they're doing is they have these
theatrical representations of the most beautiful and wonderful life where
people are dancing in wheat fields and and delivering picnic food
while everybody laughs and cheers that should be illegal right I mean it's
manipulation it's clear they're clearly fucking with people's heads and they're
using psychology they're they're not doing it in a way where they're trying to
objectively coldly relay rely facts and have people see these facts and
recognize that this has benefit to them no what they're doing is they're trying
to get
people excited about the possibility of living a life like they're seeing when
they're relaying these facts of the they're doing it with music they're doing
it with joyous
dancing and it's bullshit it's it's really wrong because it's you're not
selling a car you know if
you if you want to do that to sell a car that doesn't bother me at all but you're
doing something
that you people who have health problems are really thinking that they're going
to wind up like these
people in this video they're they're really there you're manipulating them to
the point where you're
getting them to bring things up to their doctor things about antidepressants or
anti-anxiety
medication or all kinds of stuff that people could just ask for and it's just
it seems insane that
of all the countries on earth there's only two that allow it and as you're
saying one that allows it
pretty much unchecked right that's that's exactly right and i'm in total
agreement with you joe that
i i don't think we're going to get rid of drug ads but i think we could make
the drug ads we you
could ensure that the drug ads leave people with an accurate uh understanding
of what the benefit of
the drug is going to but don't you think if you have any ads they're going to
there's going to be
room for fuckery and there's going to be i mean if you have any ads that say
okay well no theatrical
representations they're going to go whoa okay what about music can i have music
like what about the way
people talk like when that when they rely when they say these uh side effects
at the end when they list
off the side effects it's crazy the way they're talking about death and suicide
you may have suicidal
thoughts like oh what why is it like that right and why is the dog wagging his
tail yeah why why are you
saying this while this lady's dancing like you know what yeah i'm totally with
you i i just think that
it's not going to happen that we get rid of them but if we made them tell the
truth and if we did studies
that looked at the messages that people actually take away from these drug ads
and made sure that
the messages were accurate that it would be an improvement so you're just being
pragmatic you're
just saying realistically we're so far fucked we're never going to remove these
ads i i i don't it's
worse than that i think they're so baked into our constitution the right to
advertise is so baked
into our constitution that it it's not going to happen but but i do think that
if um if you made the ads
tell the truth about how the drug compares to other therapeutic approaches how
it compares to taking
charge your lifestyle what the real cost is not what your copay is if you made
the ads communicate an
accurate picture of the role of that drug in therapy in therapeutics and the
price the relative price
that that it wouldn't be so bad i i agree 100 with you it makes no sense
doctors know how to read
medical journals and they should be deciding what's good for people we don't
need the tv ad to tell us
that all that said it ain't going away so i think the energy ought to be to
figure out how to deliver a
constructive message it seems like but if you did have a constructive message
and it was comprehensive
it would take it would you need like a half an hour infomercial it wouldn't
necessarily fit inside
a one-minute advertising if you're talking about the benefit of different
lifestyle choices if you're
talking about diet and exercise and how it affects the way these things
interact with the body and you
know how what's the actual cost with the copay all the all the all if you have
all those factors in
how you're going to squeeze that into a one-minute ad well maybe you can't but
but maybe it needs to be
a two-minute ad maybe the law needs to be that you need a two-minute or five
maybe make it as boring
as possible so the end of the day they hate you're on the right page right yeah
yeah but but you could
standardize it yeah this is how the drug compares to therapeutic alternatives
this is how it compares to
lifestyle this is what it costs this is how many people you need to treat in
order for one to benefit
you could make that standard so it's just like the drug label that the fda uh
approves right it's
standard you know where to find stuff so i think you and i share one common
thought that we're not
on one side or the other and that pharmaceutical drug pharmaceutical drugs have
some amazing benefits
and they're they've been incredible for mankind in so many different ways the
problem is
unchecked capitalism like unchecked profit unchecked where where you have so
much money that you can
influence the way things are regulated you can influence the way things are
promoted by health
officials where you just have full reign with your ability to distort
information and to cover up the
damaging and detrimental effects of these drugs and that's where i think we we
agree about pharmaceutical
companies with what they've done in terms of whether whether it's lying about
studies lying about the
addictive properties of these drugs it's been absolutely horrific but as well
some pharmaceutical drugs are
amazing correct both things are true right both things are true and uh i think
there are two important
points to be made one is the this may sound impolite but the primary function
of the drug companies
is to make money for their investors and we've got to get over the illusion
that they're somehow their
purpose is to serve our health the purpose is to make money and in our largely
unregulated system uniquely
unregulated healthcare system uh pharmaceutical system uh amongst developed
countries we allow the drug
companies to control the information that flows to doctors and patients and
that's what has to change
that's what has to change and um the amount of accountability that drug
companies have uh so like
you know we've talked before about pfizer and that what was the one drug where
they had the largest uh
settlement ever with the the largest penalty ever as a pfizer it was an
arthritis drug and what did they do
uh like what was their what was the uh the the i want to say error but what was
the lie like what did
what what were they selling versus what was reality so i can't tell you i know
but i can't tell you
i i spent about 10 10 years a little more than 10 years in litigation as an
expert in the national drug cases
and when i served as an as an expert i got to see all the documents so there
would be like 20 million
documents in a case and i could see the science and if i needed a statistician
to do a reanalysis of the
primary data i got that i got to see how the marketing people strategize to
exploit the science to
the full to to create the most uh profit i got to see how they marketed to
doctors how they wrote the
articles in the medical journals and i did that for in the case of pfizer uh
plaintiff's attorneys hired me
to an