>Bullshit... marketing budgets outstrip research, development and manufacturing all by very large margins... in most big pharma companies it's over 80-90% of the budget.

I was pretty skeptical of this claim being true so I had to do a quick internet search.

I'm surprised to find there was some truth to the first half of the comment but the second claim appears to be wrong. [1]

[1] http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/16472/do-typical...

I stand corrected, but would be surprised if other expenses weren't really disguised marketing/sales.

I don't recall seeing any advertisements for this specific drug.

Regardless, I don't see how this disproves my point for drugs in general. If investing in advertisement increases their profit, then logically they should do it. It's not like the advertisements are taking away money that would otherwise go to research. They are increasing the total amount of revenue, some of which will go to even more research.

If they advertised the specific drug, they'd have to list all of the side effects and the ad becomes much less sexy.. Instead they just advertise the condition and let patients decide;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZOrRItIrYs