Nootropics: smart drugs

What is your take on drugs that enhance mental capacity? Ritalin, vinpocetine, etc. Should they be legal? Is it fair that some college/university students take them for better grades?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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It was making them bank, sure, but do you honestly think a drug company is gonna keep things on the market to make a buck over consumer lives?

I see what you are trying to say, but I don't think your argument is very good. Just because FDA trials are extensive it doesn't mean they are fail-proof. And pharmaceutical companies are COMPANIES first and foremost. Maybe they don't kill people, but that's because they can't get away with it. Look at insurance companies: they can kill people and get away with it, and they damn well do it all the time.

I see what you mean that those substances are just like coffee, but there is a distinction, at least in America. You know, it is one thing for baseball players to work-out a lot, have perfect nutrition, and eat spinach. That has been around for ages. But nearly everyone finds steroids suspect. Isn't it kinda the same thing? We all drink coffee, but only a few of us use unperscribed ritalin. Maybe there is no REAL difference, but there is a perceived one.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Look, if it turned a profit and they didn't get caught for it, I am sure drug companies would do anything. You can believe in their morals as much as you want. All I am saying is that 1) the FDA is not fail-proof, 2) big-pharma is suspect.

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Don't you think they'd rather have them live and be using the drug long term? Makes a whole shitload more sense than your argument does.

I often hear America is super-overmedicated. And don't you think big-pharma lobbies doctors to put their patients in all-sorts of pills? How morally suspect is that? Very, but also very profitable.

Either way, there was more stuff in my post directly responding to you.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Not all the time. Vioxx caused 88-130k heart attacks before it was pulled from the market, and evidence suggests Merck knew it was dangerous and kept it in the market for a while.

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Pharmaceutical giant Merck's Gardasil (which can cost $140 to $275 for each of the required series of shots, plus office visit charges), is the most expensive vaccine ever marketed in the U.S. Merck also makes Vioxx, which was withdrawn from the market after causing an estimated 88,000-139,000 heart attacks, 30-40 percent of them fatal, according to the FDA's Dr. David Graham.
http://morningsentinel.mainetoday.co...s/4648048.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vioxx mentions several studies which showed Vioxx caused heart attacks, all of which were edited or manipulated by merck to keep the drug in the market.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

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If this is the case, then you've answered your original post right? Obviously the drugs are bad and no one should ever take them. So why we having this argument?

What are forums for? I want to see what other people think.

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I'm not disputing that Merck may have been negligent in not doing the proper studies to further look into the findings, but to suggest that they would KILL THEIR PATIENTS TO MAKE A BUCK, which is what you're suggesting, is asinine.

I understand that you have the greater understanding of the subject. All I am holding is that drug companies are primarily that - companies. I don't doubt they will go to any length to make a profit. From what I heard, some Merck execs KNEW that there were serious risks involved with the drug but decided to keep it going to at least cover the costs of research. Maybe I am wrong. If so, I apologize.

Either way, I asked you on my original post:

I see what you mean that those substances are just like coffee, but there is a distinction, at least in America. You know, it is one thing for baseball players to work-out a lot, have perfect nutrition, and eat spinach. That has been around for ages. But nearly everyone finds steroids suspect. Isn't it kinda the same thing? We all drink coffee, but only a few of us use unperscribed ritalin. Maybe there is no REAL difference, but there is a perceived one.

If you don't want to respond to that, fine. But it is the kind of thing I made this thread to talk about.

I was speaking idiomatically.

They don't have to kill them to make profits in morally suspect ways. The elderly in MA are extremely overmedicated, to the point that it is not beneficial and can actually harm them. You don't think any of that has to do with drug companies courting doctors? Yet the public isn't clamoring against big pharma.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I thought Vioxx was a good case of this, but according to SuperNova it is not. From what I understand, Merck allowed the drug to go into sale knowing that it was dangerous and it ended up killing 80-130 thousand people. They made the money from those sales.

You are right, obviously, drug companies make more money from keeping people on their meds. That only proves what I was saying, though, that they can't be trusted; they have an incentive to keep you on their drugs, whether or not you need it: it is what makes them money, and it is their primary concern as a company.

FELIPE NO