I have little respect for attorneys in general and really detest the advertising they do. It was barely a week before we started seeing the ads about Sandusky victims (the Penn State mess). How disgusting, they are truly the bottom feeders. I blame much of what is wrong in our society on the greed this type of attorney has perpetuated. Now one doesn't have to accept responsibility for one's own stupidity, blame someone else and get paid for it. Same thing with crime, blame your upbringing, the neighborhood or society in general.

I think that frivolous lawsuits should be tossed and those involved, especially the attorney, should have to pay for the court's time. That would bring a fast end to this BS.

I actually blame the drug companies and doctors for some of the problems with medicines and I think they should be held accountable. It seems often a doctor will prescribe a new drug (I call them the drug of the month) that is being pushed by the drug companies over a tested older drug. Why are these doctors prescribing these newer less known and less tested drugs? Hmmm...

I was told to take a drug when I was pregnant that I refused (At the advice of another docotor) and later found out (through these legal ads) that it could have caused serious harm to my baby. Possibly these advertisements about the drugs will help not only the doctors who are being sued to think twice, but the people taking medicines to know that there can be serious, sometimes life threatening, side effects even if doctors and drug companies don't tell you about them.

I'm sure if you had a child who suffered a disability because of a new medicine, you would want to know the medicine may have caused the health problem and, yes, you should be able to sue. I would not consider those to be frivilous law suits. I actually appreciate that these lawyers are telling you can sue because I doubt the drug companies are going to inform you that your heart problem or paralyzing joint pain may be from their medicine.

Yes there can be serious problems when new medicines come on the market - and I'm thinking of Vioxx here - however there's a lot of blame to go around. I would be more inclined to blame the FDA too who oversees prescriptions and who ultimately decides if they should be licensed and released.

Oh, I agree, maire cate, the FDA could factor into a lot of it. And, I'm sure each medicine case is different (were sampling studies done correctly, etc.). There's probably enough blame to go around. I just not sure it's the lawyers that are the bad guys in these cases. Possibly they are helping bring these problems into light. Maybe the FDA has to be stricter or enforce stronger guidelines about informing patients of possible side effects.

The fallacy in blaming the doctor for letting the drug company "control" them just demonstrates the I'm not responsible for anything attitude so prolific and so troublesome. Doctors are far from perfect and should be held responsible when they screwup but doctors also should not be held responsible for the myriad of people who keep running saying give me that drug I saw on TV! and the others who just have to have a pill, not do something to help themselves with their own issues.

When will people learn that they're better off to take less drugs? Seems to me when you're pregnant, common sense says avoid them. Everyone is so concerned about alcohol and cigarettes but baby, let's pop those pills!

Why do drug companies rush to get all these pills out there? Because people demand pills! Any kind of pills. They don't necessarily (and likely don't) need> them, but they want them. It's fashionable to take pills. You're not an adult apparently if you're not popping a dozen pills for which you can't tell their purpose.

Lawyers have become more and more the ambulance chasers of old and government welfare recipients on their own. Seems to me a lawyer who needs to advertise isn't a lawyer I'd choose. It's both funny and sad to see a big-name lawyer around here who was a top criminal defense lawyer in his day whose talents, well, apparently waned since he lost more cases and accordingly could get fewer and fewer clients. Now he's become an ambulance chaser. Like I said, in a way, funny, in a way, sad.

Could be ...

... they're just following suit.

o j

Lawyers are one of the biggest problems in our country! Sadly, most of our congressional representatives are lawyers, so they won't do anything to stop frivolous lawsuits. We drastically need tort reform!!!

Wanda, I agree with you on that. How are we going to get these laws changed that rein in the crazy lawyers when its the LAWYERS that make the laws?

We're supposed to have a representative government, but while lawyers represent less than 5% of our workforce, they represent 50% of the "people" (and I use that term loosely) in congress.

How are they going to vote against their own kind?

They won't.

cynic,
I personally feel that there's only a small portion of people that are really drug seeking. I personally hate taking drugs (even tylenol). I have argued with Dr.'s over giving antibiotics for my kids for ear infections, and prescribing medicines for me when I think alternates could work.

It may seem easy to say pregnant women shouldn't take drugs, but I was high risk and had more than one health problem going on. And, there are many pregnant women that really need to be on drugs for one reason or another. Believe it or not, I had previously miscarried because I wasn't on drugs that I needed to be on. You rely on your doctors to advise you but not prescribe medicine to you simply because it's easier that way.

When you have a serious heart or blood pressure or other serious issues going on, you trust your doctor to prescribe medicines that may work best for you with the least side effects... you don't expect them to prescribe their "drug of the month" because they may in one way or the other be benefiting from doing so. Many conditions are too serious to diagnosis and be able to medicate yourself. Doctors are not being held accountable. I had a side effect for a medicine I mentioned to my doctor and they had no idea the side effect existed even though it was first on the list of side effects and the Dr. was a specialist and this wasn't a rare drug. The doctors should not be prescribing medicines without knowing the major side effects.

And botton line, even if people are drug seeking and don't really need the drugs, why are the doctor's prescribing them? Most conditions are usually backed by some paper documented results -- blood work off, blood pressure high, etc.. If they can't say no to someone who sees an add on tv and wants to try the new drug, then maybe they shouldn't be Doctors.

Yes, it certainly has gotten out of hand. Class actions make money for the lawyers, not the clients.

The ones I take particular issue with are now those advertising lawyers who advise the injured party a quick settlement following an accident "to get on with their lives". That is probably the worst advice there could be to someone who has been injured and may have complications well after the accident. That is one reason why that type of lawsuit takes so long. I used to tell clients that it could take up to 3 years to get to trial. The quick fix has spilled over into this area and it is not necessarily a good solution.

carla35, I agree with many of the things you say, but I don't agree with your position that doctors are the major problem. A friend of mine is a doctor. It wasn't that many years ago that if he should come by an automobile accident he'd be in a precarious position were he to stop and lend assistance. A lay person would be immune from a lawsuit but a doctor would not. They finally passed the Good Samaritan law to give them the ability to assist without looking over their shoulders for lawyers. And not just the suits but the ridiculous jury awards being given make malpractice insurance cost prohibitive for some. Those costs have to be passed on. Then there's the insurance issues mandating what doctors can and cannot do at times also.

There's a lot of blame to go around. I think you're not looking at a very big picture. With the "just say no" attitude, that's cute but there too a doctor not giving someone medication can subject themself to yet another lawsuit. Whether there's a chance of winning aside, the time factor and the patients who will go without care while such a suit is being fought or the cost of a nuisance settlement yet again compounds the problems previously outlined.

Doctors are human beings. Period. They're not foolproof. We certainly hope there's no goofups made, but how can they not happen?

To say that a doctor is going to know what will work best on you is again flying in the face of reality. They're HUMANS! They have no crystal ball and CANNOT KNOW that one drug works best for you. I question why a new drug could not be better than old. Just being new doesn't mean they're better but just because the old works some of the time doesn't mean that something new won't work. People are human guinea pigs. Doctors "practice" They don't know all and the best you can hope for is a best guess. Beyond that is expecting way too much. But someone just waiting for someone to guess something that doesn't work (whether a "wrong decision" or not) in order to line their pockets is part of the greed in this world that sorely needs treatment.

I pretty much agree with you cynic. The last time I had to see my Dr, we sere discussing prescription meds and I told him the Urplogist wanted to prescribe a new med for me but I had to turn it down. It being a 'new' drug, it was very expensive and would put us in the Donut hole. He said how wrong that is that seniors had to not take a drug because they couldn't afford it. He said he gets a lot of people coming in telling him what prescriptions THEY WANT, and when he turns them down, he never sees them again. I kiddingly told him well, he can't prescribe a drug for what I had (sores in my mouth), but he wasn't going to be rid of me that easy. He just laughed. He has a little gizmo, looks like a cell phone, and he looks up prescription drugs he is thinking of prescribing, and it lets him know what the drug is for plus the side effects. There is no way Drs can memorize every drug and all of the side effects. Like Cynic said....they are human.

dotmom, if you have canker sores, try L-Lysine tablets. They are OTC, inexpensive and can work wonders.

Here is a link that might be useful: L-Lysine info

Sadly in a lot of cases it isn't the doctor, it is the patient who is at fault. They go to different specialists who do not know what another has prescribed. The blame is then pushed onto the pharmacist, but what if the patient uses different pharmacies? Then where does it land? There's a reason that the doctors ask for a list of all medications being taken, including over the counter meds. But they rely on the honesty of the patient in providing that list.

Cynic, I understand where you are coming from but I don't think many know why some doctors prescribe the drugs they do (The problems don't just stem from human error -they make choices). Some may be getting kickbacks (in one way or the other) and that is wrong. Many are also more concerned with fitting in more patients then with spending quality time with patients. There are good Dr.'s (like the one who told me NOT to take the drug when I was pregnant) and there are not so good dr.s (like the one who told me to take it --which I might add it was just on the market and I was pregnant and not wanting to take it). It's not human error; It's incompetence and if I had taken that drug and it hurt my baby, I would have and should have sued.

I have both doctors and lawyers in my family, and I know people dislike both groups. But when it comes to drug related problems, I would totally finger point at the doctors before I would point at the lawyers. Granted sometimes problems can just be from normal human error, but those doctors still need to pay when human error comes into play. Even if it was only human error when a Dr. "accidentally" took off the wrong foot, they still need to pay. And if they cause someone to have a heart attack, or an infant to have a serious disabilty, they should have to pay too if a mistake was made. If your electrician wires your house wrong due to humna error, and there's a fire, he still needs to be accountable. The lawyers trying to get the money for you when a professional messes up are not the bad guys. I think if you had aserious medical problem occur because of medical incompetence, you would feel differently.

Below is a site that has some conspiracy theories...but it has articles from more legitimate sources listed lower down in body that kind of explain what may be going on with some doctors. I'm not sure that people know the reason some medicines are given is sometimes simply because the Dr. was given free samples of those meds. Free samples and free trips to Hawaii should not factor into play, IMHO.

Here is a link that might be useful: Kick Backs?