The sincerely incensed responses were infinitely more entertaining than your original article, as brilliantly written as it was, Nine-Deuce. Sorry – you’ve been upstaged.

Pharmaceutical companies cannot invent disorders to treat. The classification of pathological problems is a completely different branch of medical science. Peer review weeds out bullshit pretty well.

Not only that, but science isn’t a factory. You can’t put money into any sort of research and expect to get something predictable out as a product. It simply doesn’t happen like that. For example, xrays came to be out of an investigation of “hey, why does this green shit show up during a vacuum tube experiment??”, and the medical application of x-rays came about because some crazy ass scientist volunteered to stick his hand under one. Science in general works like that, we find out a lot from unlikely sources via really keen observation and measurement. Cures are a lot more complex than symptom relief from a technical point of view, but if your logic were sound then there wouldn’t be any new vaccines. The vaccine schedule would be reduced at least. Vaccines are the cheapest and most effective way to improve public health, and yet new ones come out fairly often. The HPV vaccine is a good example. There isn’t a lot of money in it either. People hospitalized due to MMR or hepatitis b would be worth a lot to em, too.

Restless Leg Syndrome is completely real. My grandfather had it before any drugs were made to relieve the problem, and it sucked. I worked on patients who couldn’t control movement in their legs as a result of RLS as well (makes it hard to get blood out of em, or do much of anything, really). If you continually found people who had severe discomfort, mostly at night, that was only relieved by movement, what would you conclude? It seems like after a huge number of people have shared symptoms of such a quirky sort that a new diagnosis is in order, and drugs if any exist to fix it.

The drugs made don’t work for everyone involved anyway. When I was pukin my brains out in the hospital it took about 5 attempts at different drugs before something worked for more than a half hour. The more drugs available to treat symptoms, the better, because each patient reacts differently to different medications.

There are many problems with pharmaceutical companies, but what you list isn’t relevant. Most of the evils exist in the pricing of drugs and the shift in patents from manufacturing patents to chemical patents. Used to be that if your competition figured out a cheaper/better way to make a chemical compound they could sell it for cheaper, but now the companies own the rights to the arrangements of atoms so everyone has to pay out the ass for newer drugs. My nigel’s pills cost like 900 dollars a month. No one can drive the price down via competition because of the reasons I outlined above.

I know what you going on about companies making up deseases/issues just to sell their product and that with the weak stream thing sounds ridiculous, just like the ad ive seen for “cum like pornstars” wich basically promises you to ejaculate more sperm.

Regarding the restless leg syndrom I wanna say that Ive got it and didnt even know there was a drug to cure it, and I find it really annoying as I move my legs all the time when I sit or before Im going to sleep wich is actually quite shite.

As a queer, I thought I’d weigh in on the “Faggot” Hyperbole Row. I totally get that you’re playing up the ad’s implication that weak peeing is un-masculine and thus weak pee-ers are effectively gay. Gynophobia and homophobia are often employed in all sorts of ridiculous manner to manipulate the brand loyalty of “hetero” men. Right now there’s an ad on body wash for tackling “serious, clinging male odor.” Various regalia relating to stereotypically masculine activities then thud to the bottom of the shower. It’s ridiculous!

However, I also get how the use of the word “faggot” is upsetting when coming from someone outside the genderqueer/queer community. You don’t own that word unless you’re part of the group oppressed by it. The casual use of “faggot” is a little too raw for me too. Yeah, there are some of us who embrace it and call each other fags, but not all of us do. Even fewer of us take kindly to hearing “faggot” from straight folks, allies or not. It amounts to a cis-gender, hetero man talking about sloppy, dirty “Cunts” to ironically dissect a sexist menstrual ad on a pro-feminist blog. Just a little raw.

Stop and Start peeing is no fun. Especially when you’re bladder wants to burst, and your stubbornly closed urethra burns like hell. Straining to pee is disconcerting. I once thought I needed to go to the doctor after waking up with the most intense urge to pee and then spending a half hour on the toilet dry as a desert, struggling to go. It was surprisingly painful–like a bladder infection and constipation combined. After a few days I realized my issues were caused by erotic dreams and nocturnal (un?)emissions. (Newfangled female anatomy!) If I had to deal with intense blockage more often, I’d be pissed enough to pad Pharma’s pockets for some relief.

Try sharing a bathroom with a guy who’s weak stream leads to nice yellow surprises in front of the toilet. Now, imagine you’re wearing socks and you decide not to flip on the lights for your bed time wee. There was screaming.