Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Pharmacology

Copyright violations by new user

See Special:Contributions/MCE-CN and Special:Contributions/MCE-EN. Some help would be appreciated. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 06:22, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

If you haven't done so already, you should notify Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:27, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

C19H24ClN3 listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect C19H24ClN3. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. There is also a discussion for C24H27N2O13 which could use interested editors' input. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 23:30, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Splitting all external links out of the drugbox and adding a new template field

Older notice

Would appreciate input from others from this project here. The thread pertains to a proposal to add 1 new external link parameter/field (GoodRx) to the drugbox and another proposal to move all the drugbox fields with external links (including the proposed field for GoodRx) to a new template in the external links section. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 22:26, 14 August 2019 (UTC) Edit: I fixed the link in the title since it was pointing to the template and not its talk page earlier; my bad. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 09:52, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

For the discussion about splitting out the links, see Template talk:Infobox drug#Prototype for Template:External links list Drug

For the discussion about the new template field for GoodRx, see Template talk:Infobox drug#GoodRx

In the event anyone is interested in commenting, the discussion in the 1st thread linked above pertains to removing all of the fields shown to the right from the drugbox and moving them into a new template which will be placed in each drug article's "External links" section.

The 2nd thread linked above pertains to adding the consumer price data field at the top of the example template to the right to the drugbox (temporarily) and moving it to the new external links template when the template split takes place (provided there is a consensus supporting both proposals). Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 11:41, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

Wholesale drug costs - Why?

Why are we including wholesale drug costs on any Wikipedia article at all? It looks inappropriate, unnecessary, overly specific, sales-catalog-ish and promotional of certain formulations over others. Drug prices change so often that it is like quoting the price of gasoline - regional, situational, in constant flux and with different prices offered to different clients. I understand the sorts of people who utilize wholesale drug information, I am confident that they never look to Wikipedia as a reference, and as far as the minuscule group who actually buy drugs wholesale - they are specialists, experts, by definition not the general public (The Federal Reserve and the U.S. Dept. of Labor for instance). They also certainly do not use Wikipedia for this information. These numbers are not useful, not accurate, do not represent meaningful data. On a side note, most of the articles which quote these wholesale numbers fail to attempt representing the entire class of drugs or variety of formulations and thereby end up promoting (or mudslinging) individually licensed and trademarked products. This can easily be interpreted as promotional and/or biased. Thank you for considering this viewpoint. --Luke Kindred (talk) 18:38, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

@Luke Kindred: You raise several issues. I will start by recognizing two of them - why is it good to post prices, and how do we do quality control. It is good to post prices because we know that lots of people - hundreds of millions? billions? - make medical decisions based on cost. The way we do quality control is with the best system that anyone in the world has identified, which is the current wiki way. I acknowledge that all the problems you raise are valid. At Wikipedia:Prices there is some developing documentation on the issue and I will add a link to this discussion to that page.

I wish it were possible to get all the benefits of presenting prices without experiencing the drawbacks. So far as anyone has been able to identify, Wikipedia does this better than anyone else with free and open data. Whether this is good enough is another issue. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:35, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

Your response seems to indicate a lack of understanding of the difference and relation between retail and wholesale drug prices. Millions/Billions do not make medical decisions based on wholesale cost (drugs specifically). It appears to be around 50,000 which is a rough approximation of the number of retail, mail-order, and LTC pharmacies in the United States (and probably the 6,000 medical insurers as well). These are the customers to whom wholesale pricing applies. But even they do not pay the listed wholesale acquisition cost (WAC) because wholesale, by definition, is negotiated on a case-by-case basis and can be as much as 40% lower than list.

To recap: wholesale drug prices do not apply to the general public and actual users and consumers of drugs, so why are we bothering to publish them on Wikipedia? WP:NOTCATALOGUE. Just because the source exists for this data does not mean it should be included. Wikipedia is not a price comparison service. There needs to be a justified reason for the mention of pricing, please tell me this reasoning?

Naturally I can see this discussion shifting to defend retail (since there is no consensus on this issue, some drugs detail wholesale prices and some detail retail). Your millions?billions? *might* utilize retail drug pricing to make health decisions - if 95% of customers for prescriptions weren't using insurance (they are). Only 5% in this country pay cash for prescription drugs and may find value in a published retail price. But this is not true either since the drastic variation in retail drug prices is basically famous in the U.S. Consumer Reports studied popular drugs at major pharmacies and found a 2,000% price discrepancy for the same products This use of reference prices, as I stated before, is not just unreliable - but downright inappropriate. I read through the entire history you provided at Wikipedia:Prices and I think this issue should be seriously discussed for the creation of an official WP policy against the use of pricing data on pharmaceutical entries --Luke Kindred (talk) 23:23, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

References

@Luke Kindred: I responded briefly because this is a controversial and well discussed issue. I have been in this discussion for a while and I can share brief direct answers to whatever you want to know. However, if you have a goal, like "seriously discussed for the creation of an official WP policy against the use of pricing data", then I would prefer to offer a little support now to help you frame and advance that goal-oriented discussion which will lead to policy. I also would like clarity on these many points but any one of them is a long discussion. What do you want to happen and how do you want things to proceed? A post in Wikipedia:Requests for comment, something other, or what did you have in mind? Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:17, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

A few things:

• We have a 68k byte article on Gasoline and diesel usage and pricing
• Wholesale and retail prices are very close. Prices are generally in three tiers and reflecting those tiers is useful.
• We know that the pharmaceutical industry really really wants to suppress the cost of medications.[1][2][3]. Wikipedia is not censored. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:31, 30 September 2019 (UTC)