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franchiseindia · 1 year

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Why does a generic medicine look different from a branded medicine?

Before going directly into why generic medicines look different from branded medicines, we should first know what these generic and branded medicines are. So, to start with, let us look at what is branded medicine.

Branded medicines are the original medicine that is manufactured under the name of the brand or company which does research on their composition, patents the composition and manufactures it. After the manufacturing is completed following thorough research, the company names the drug on its brand name and then sends it for approval to the institutions of its country of origin which deals with the safety and quality check of the medicines like the FDA in the US. Following the approval received by the company, the medicine composition is patented by the company. This makes them suffer a huge cost and thus, the cost of the brand medicines is very high. Alongside this, this patenting of the medicine provides the company security that till the patent is there, only the original company can sell the brand drug for the specific purpose. This also allows the company to spend sums on the advertisement of the drug and sell them in the local markets with the guarantee of safety, efficiency, and quality. Now when the patent of the brand drug has expired, then using the same active ingredients, the company itself and the other companies can produce an alternative version of the brand drug. These are known as generic drugs. Generic drugs are alternatives for the particular branded drugs available in the market. They contain the same effectiveness, active component, and safety as the brand drug, but they are different from each other only in their appearance.

Generic medicine looks different from the branded medicine

Since generic medicines are made of the same active component as branded medicine, so to differentiate from branded medicine, the generic drugs are given differentiations based on their looks. Since, the looks of the medicine like its appearance, color, and flavor don’t have any impact on the quality and safety of the medicine, so they are provided with different appearances. Other than these, generic medicines are known well for providing the same level of benefits to the users as brand medicines. Also, the side effects of generic medicines are also found to be the same as the brand drugs. But the difference is in the inactive component content of the generic drugs. They possess a different inactive ingredient than that is present in the brand drug. This also provides an edge for generic drugs to reduce their cost. So, finally, we can see that since the functionality and advantages of generic medicines are exactly of the same kind as that of brand medicines, so to differentiate them from the real brand name, the looks of the generic drug are varied.

Even though there are present around multiple of generic medicine for the same brand drug, so each generic alternative must have a different identity to create a market for itself. Therefore, not just the generic drugs look different from brand drugs, but also they look different from similar generic drugs manufactured by other companies.

Approvals provided by FDA

FDA or Food and Drug Agency is a federal agency of the United States that looks into the safety and quality of generic drugs and then only they provide approvals to the companies for selling their drugs in the market. FDA wants that the generic medicines produced must be identical to the bioequivalent range of their brand drugs. This is done to ensure the almost exact similarity in the properties of the generic drugs.

To ensure the quality of generic drugs, the FDA in the US continuously keeps its eyes on the approved generic drugs. It takes care of monitoring and investigating all the negative patient side effects and reactions. In any case, if any form of the problem is found, then FDA experts perform thorough testing and analysis of the drugs and provide a thorough recommendation for changes to the manufacturers. Besides, the FDA also provides health advisory notices and awareness events for the patients to make them aware of the various generic drugs present and their qualities.

Before providing approval to the applications submitted for a generic drug as a substitute for any brand drug, FDA looks into the following points while analyzing. Some of these points are mentioned below.

A generic drug has the same strength as a brand drug.

The inactive ingredients used in the generic drug must be of acceptable quality and standard.

The expiry time of the generic drug must be the same amount of time as the brand name.

The containers used for the carriage of the generics must be appropriate.

Generics must address the relevant patents on their labels and should use the same kind of label as the brand drugs.

Strict specifications are followed while producing generic drugs. The drugs must contain the highest quality, purity, and effectiveness as the brand drugs.

Once all these qualities are met by the applicant's generic drug, approval is provided by FDA for the distribution of the generic drug as a substitute for the brand-name drug in the market.

Approvals for the sale of generic medicines/drugs in India

In India for the sale of generic drugs, the companies must seek approval from the Drug advisory board of India. Only after approval from this board, the drugs are allowed to be sold and used in the Indian markets. Even the special, Central Drugs Standard Control Organization is present in India, which monitors the manufacturing of generic medicines in the country. Not just this, the medicines are tested for checking their efficiency and to ensure the safety of the user. Alongside this, the special organization in India as mentioned above investigates the potential problems related to the drugs and provides suggestions to the manufacturing units, the public, and healthcare experts. Thus, after total checking and approval provided for a specific generic medicine, only the medicine is launched for use in the market.

Generic or branded, which is better

When it comes to deciding a better choice between the generic and brand drug, the complete decision-making should lie in the hands of the healthcare professional, prescribing the medicines. Many types of research and studies have been conducted to find out, which, generic or branded drugs are beneficial for patients. The studies have found that although there is very little difference in the quality, efficiency, and safety between generic and branded drugs, some differences have been found in the health of the patients. It is found in a study that those who totally rely on generic drugs for the treatment of their illness are found to suffer worse health outcomes than those who used branded drugs as well. But this is not the case everywhere; this outcome is more prevalent in cardiovascular issues and is found among the socioeconomically weaker section of society. This is because these people never look to go for buying branded drugs due to their very high cost and thus switch themselves to cheaper alternatives which are generic drugs.

Still, a thorough study is left to be conducted before directly concluding which one will be better for the long run, branded drug or a generic drug. But still, we can say if there are no constraints on the affordability of the customer, then they should prefer brand names. But in case of economic constraints, the patient should consult with a doctor, who knows better about the different generic drugs and their illness. So, he will prescribe the best generic drug available for your purpose.

Benefits of generic drugs

Generic medicines as we know are the same active ingredient containing branded medicines, but the difference is visible in their appearance, packaging, and the name given to them. These are not provided in the market until the patent on the branded medicines is expired. After the expiry, the same company or other companies can move to produce generic medicines of the same medicine.

Generic medicines are developed to ensure the availability of the medicine in the market even after the expiry of branded medicines’ patent and thus it has some of the major advantages due to which people choose them. Let us look at these benefits one by one.

Affordable price

Generic medicines are significantly low in cost than their branded drug counterparts. This makes them very affordable to buy by the population. This low-cost nature of generic drugs comes from the fact that these drugs are produced using the same active component as the branded drug. This saves the cost of trials and tests and approvals for the generic drug company.

Besides, generic drugs are not advertised. And the marketing policy used for their promotions is also very cost-friendly. This makes the company cut the cost of the marketing, advertisement, and approval of generic drugs. Thus, they are able to sell the drugs at such a huge price margin and make them available in the market at lower prices.

Easily available

For any branded drug, there are present around 12000 varieties of generic drugs. Each one of which is affordable and safe to use. Whenever you go out to buy a branded drug but it's unavailable, you can easily find one of its alternative, generic drugs. This easy availability of generic drugs provides the benefit that every patient should get the necessary treatment for the illness they are suffering from. Patients don’t have to wait for the procurement of branded drugs in order to take the medicine.

So, the ease of availability of generic drugs in the market benefits the customers to the highest level. To further ensure that each citizen of India is aware of the presence of generic drugs in almost all common branded drugs, the Government of India has established the Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janaushadi Pariyojana (PMBJP). It works to aware the maximum population of the country about generic drugs and makes sure that in the coming future generic drugs related to maximum branded drugs be made available to citizens of India.

Covers insurance benefits

Generic medicines are low in cost, thus they are very much affordable to almost everyone. This provides another benefit that most of these drugs are covered under various insurance policies provided by different companies. This is because of their low cost. Insurance coverage means, you won’t have to pay for buying your generic drugs, but the insurance companies will pay for them. This will help you cut down your regular spending on medicines and thus provides you with an added advantage. But care must be taken as this can vary based on the insurance company and their insurance policies. So, make sure you earn complete knowledge of the insurance policy and the drugs they cover, before buying them.

Safe and have quality

Generic drugs, as are made of the same active component as the branded drug, so they provide the equivalent level of quality as well. But the safety and quality of the generic medicine are ensured before introducing them in the market by providing them the license. The medicines are thoroughly checked, and after complete approval for their quality and safety, these medicines are given licenses.

To ensure that only quality and safe generic drugs are sold in the Indian markets, the Government of India has a separate department. The Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janaushadi Pariyojana takes care of the procurement of only quality medicines in the country. These drugs include only those which are manufactured by companies that are CE, FSSAI, and WHO-GMP certified. Thus, through proper checks on the medicines, Government ensures that they are manufactured following strict guidelines and are beneficial for the consumers.

Conclusion

Generic drugs are alternative drugs that are manufactured for serving the purpose the same purpose as the brand drugs. These are the cheaper alternatives that look different from the brand drugs but contain the same qualities as the brand drug. They have a variety of benefits that makes them so popular among the population.

Even the health advisories of all the countries conduct awareness campaigns to spread awareness among people about these generics. This is done to ensure that everyone gets the appropriate medicine for their illnesses at a lower cost. Only thing is that generics are given different looks than the brand medicines to ensure their distinction from the brand drugs.

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dachealthcare · 2 months

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Medication Management: Your Comprehensive Guide to Healthcare Solutions

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Empowering Diabetes Management: Accessing Supplies & Medications for Better Health

Tailored Solutions: The Importance of DIABETIC PRESCRIPTIONS in Diabetes Management

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Tailored Treatment: Understanding Medication Prescription for Personalized Care

Maximizing Savings: Exploring Options for Lowest Cost Medications

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Precision in Healthcare: Understanding Medical Prescription Drugs

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#pharmacy #online medical #RX medicines

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thoughtportal · 1 year

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#toot #toots #mastodon #online privacy #internet privacy #right to privacy #medical privacy #privacy

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virtualhealthclinic · 1 year

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Which Online Medical Consultation Is Best?

Know your health is important. You shouldn't compromise on it, or ask others to do it for you.

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doctormarketingsvc · 2 years

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Omnichannel Marketing for Online Medical Businesses: Benefits and Differences

Suppose you’ve acquired some experience in the medical digital marketing world. In that case, you may know by now just how much importance each marketing channel holds and why it is necessary to pay them all enough attention. As an online medical business, you are constantly trying to find new ways and opportunities to nurture potential patients and lead them to your medical website to convert and gather enough credibility to become a renowned name among your medical competitors.

#omnichannel marketing #online medical #multichannel marketing

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donaldhicks · 2 years

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#Online Medical

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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 months

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Privacy first

The internet is embroiled in a vicious polycrisis: child safety, surveillance, discrimination, disinformation, polarization, monopoly, journalism collapse – not only have we failed to agree on what to do about these, there's not even a consensus that all of these are problems.

But in a new whitepaper, my EFF colleagues Corynne McSherry, Mario Trujillo, Cindy Cohn and Thorin Klosowski advance an exciting proposal that slices cleanly through this Gordian knot, which they call "Privacy First":

https://www.eff.org/wp/privacy-first-better-way-address-online-harms

Here's the "Privacy First" pitch: whatever is going on with all of the problems of the internet, all of these problems are made worse by commercial surveillance.

Worried your kid is being made miserable through targeted ads? No surveillance, no targeting.

Worried your uncle was turned into a Qanon by targeted disinformation? No surveillance, no targeting. Worried that racialized people are being targeted for discriminatory hiring or lending by algorithms? No surveillance, no targeting.

Worried that nation-state actors are exploiting surveillance data to attack elections, politicians, or civil servants? No surveillance, no surveillance data.

Worried that AI is being trained on your personal data? No surveillance, no training data.

Worried that the news is being killed by monopolists who exploit the advantage conferred by surveillance ads to cream 51% off every ad-dollar? No surveillance, no surveillance ads.

Worried that social media giants maintain their monopolies by filling up commercial moats with surveillance data? No surveillance, no surveillance moat.

The fact that commercial surveillance hurts so many groups of people in so many ways is terrible, of course, but it's also an amazing opportunity. Thus far, the individual constituencies for, say, saving the news or protecting kids have not been sufficient to change the way these big platforms work. But when you add up all the groups whose most urgent cause would be significantly improved by comprehensive federal privacy law, vigorously enforced, you get an unstoppable coalition.

America is decades behind on privacy. The last really big, broadly applicable privacy law we passed was a law banning video-store clerks from leaking your porn-rental habits to the press (Congress was worried about their own rental histories after a Supreme Court nominee's movie habits were published in the Washington City Paper):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act

In the decades since, we've gotten laws that poke around the edges of privacy, like HIPAA (for health) and COPPA (data on under-13s). Both laws are riddled with loopholes and neither is vigorously enforced:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/09/how-to-make-a-child-safe-tiktok/

Privacy First starts with the idea of passing a fit-for-purpose, 21st century privacy law with real enforcement teeth (a private right of action, which lets contingency lawyers sue on your behalf for a share of the winnings):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/07/americans-deserve-more-current-american-data-privacy-protection-act

Here's what should be in that law:

A ban on surveillance advertising:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/03/ban-online-behavioral-advertising

Data minimization: a prohibition on collecting or processing your data beyond what is strictly necessary to deliver the service you're seeking.

Strong opt-in: None of the consent theater click-throughs we suffer through today. If you don't give informed, voluntary, specific opt-in consent, the service can't collect your data. Ignoring a cookie click-through is not consent, so you can just bypass popups and know you won't be spied on.

No preemption. The commercial surveillance industry hates strong state privacy laws like the Illinois biometrics law, and they are hoping that a federal law will pre-empt all those state laws. Federal privacy law should be the floor on privacy nationwide – not the ceiling:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/07/federal-preemption-state-privacy-law-hurts-everyone

No arbitration. Your right to sue for violations of your privacy shouldn't be waivable in a clickthrough agreement:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/04/stop-forced-arbitration-data-privacy-legislation

No "pay for privacy." Privacy is not a luxury good. Everyone deserves privacy, and the people who can least afford to buy private alternatives are most vulnerable to privacy abuses:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/10/why-getting-paid-your-data-bad-deal

No tricks. Getting "consent" with confusing UIs and tiny fine print doesn't count:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/02/designing-welcome-mats-invite-user-privacy-0

A Privacy First approach doesn't merely help all the people harmed by surveillance, it also prevents the collateral damage that today's leading proposals create. For example, laws requiring services to force their users to prove their age ("to protect the kids") are a privacy nightmare. They're also unconstitutional and keep getting struck down.

A better way to improve the kid safety of the internet is to ban surveillance. A surveillance ban doesn't have the foreseeable abuses of a law like KOSA (the Kids Online Safety Act), like bans on information about trans healthcare, medication abortions, or banned books:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/kids-online-safety-act-still-huge-danger-our-rights-online

When it comes to the news, banning surveillance advertising would pave the way for a shift to contextual ads (ads based on what you're looking at, not who you are). That switch would change the balance of power between news organizations and tech platforms – no media company will ever know as much about their readers as Google or Facebook do, but no tech company will ever know as much about a news outlet's content as the publisher does:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising

This is a much better approach than the profit-sharing arrangements that are being trialed in Australia, Canada and France (these are sometimes called "News Bargaining Codes" or "Link Taxes"). Funding the news by guaranteeing it a share of Big Tech's profits makes the news into partisans for that profit – not the Big Tech watchdogs we need them to be. When Torstar, Canada's largest news publisher, struck a profit-sharing deal with Google, they killed their longrunning, excellent investigative "Defanging Big Tech" series.

A privacy law would also protect access to healthcare, especially in the post-Roe era, when Big Tech surveillance data is being used to target people who visit abortion clinics or secure medication abortions. It would end the practice of employers forcing workers to wear health-monitoring gadget. This is characterized as a "voluntary" way to get a "discount" on health insurance – but in practice, it's a way of punishing workers who refuse to let their bosses know about their sleep, fertility, and movements.

A privacy law would protect marginalized people from all kinds of digital discrimination, from unfair hiring to unfair lending to unfair renting. The commercial surveillance industry shovels endless quantities of our personal information into the furnaces that fuel these practices. A privacy law shuts off the fuel supply:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/digital-privacy-legislation-civil-rights-legislation

There are plenty of ways that AI will make our lives worse, but copyright won't fix it. For issues of labor exploitation (especially by creative workers), the answer lies in labor law:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/01/how-the-writers-guild-sunk-ais-ship/

And for many of AI's other harms, a muscular privacy law would starve AI of some of its most potentially toxic training data:

https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-updated-terms-to-use-customer-data-to-train-ai-2023-9

Meanwhile, if you're worried about foreign governments targeting Americans – officials, military, or just plain folks – a privacy law would cut off one of their most prolific and damaging source of information. All those lawmakers trying to ban Tiktok because it's a surveillance tool? What about banning surveillance, instead?

Monopolies and surveillance go together like peanut butter and chocolate. Some of the biggest tech empires were built on mountains of nonconsensually harvested private data – and they use that data to defend their monopolies. Legal privacy guarantees are a necessary precursor to data portability and interoperability:

https://www.eff.org/wp/interoperability-and-privacy

Once we are guaranteed a right to privacy, lawmakers and regulators can order tech giants to tear down their walled gardens, rather than relying on tech companies to (selectively) defend our privacy:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

The point here isn't that privacy fixes all the internet's woes. The policy is "privacy first," not "just privacy." When it comes to making a new, good internet, there's plenty of room for labor law, civil rights legislation, antitrust, and other legal regimes. But privacy has the biggest constituency, gets us the most bang for the buck, and has the fewest harmful side-effects. It's a policy we can all agree on, even if we don't agree on much else. It's a coalition in potentia that would be unstoppable in reality. Privacy first! Then – everything else!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

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cocklessboy · 3 months

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So here's the thing about having a post break containment on tumblr: if you make a mistake in the original post, there's absolutely fucking nothing you can do about it.

The people reblogging once you realize your mistake aren't reblogging it from your blog. They're reblogging it from someone you never even knew existed. If you edit the original, it does not affect the copies already being passed around.

You can make an addition to the post with a correction! But here's the thing. Posts tend to break containment if they are tagged and people see it in the tags they follow. But reblogs don't appear in tags. Only original posts do. So your addition will only be reblogged by people who follow you, and it's pretty rare for a post with a correction added in a reblog to break containment in the same way as the original.

So you wind up getting a lot of reblogs with angry comments about how you're wrong (and that's if they're being polite - the less polite ones will attack you rather viciously, which is not something I would wish on anyone). And even if you didn't make a mistake, if there's something you didn't make clear enough for Tumblr Reading Comprehension™️, you'll wind up inundated with angry comments from people who missed the point, and it's too late to go back and adjust your wording to make it clearer.

(That's why I'm making a new post for this instead of responding to the comments I got on the post in question, by the way. I'm hoping some of the same people who spread around the original might spot this one in the tags and share it around as well.)

So what is this about? I recently made a post about how a friend was worried that I was addicted to my ADHD meds purely because I said I look forward to taking them and they bring me joy.

The purpose of that post was:

Something bringing you joy doesn't necessarily make it addictive. (For fuck's sake stop being afraid of pleasure.)

Even if something is addictive, that's not inherently harmful.

Don't be afraid to take your meds just because they might be addictive. If they help you more than they harm you, take them.

I also made a comment about how my ADHD meds aren't addictive anyway. This is the point people have been pouncing on me about. So allow me to explain where that assertion came from.

My psychiatrist, an ADHD specialist who manages my meds: I know you're nervous about addiction and tolerance to meds, but don't worry. If you have ADHD, methylphenidate is not physically addictive.

My GP, who I got a second opinion from out of nervousness: Yup, your psychiatrist is right. You don't need to be afraid to take these. Take them as directed and you will not form a physical dependence on them. If you notice them getting less effective with time, though, you can always just take a break from them to remove any tolerance.

Me, after a year and a half of taking these meds: Yup, no addiction here. I guess my doctors were right.

So here we are. Two doctors and my own personal experience have assured me that ADHD meds are not something to be afraid of. Yet I keep seeing people afraid to take their meds because they're afraid of dependence. So why don't I do a nice thing in this post of mine and reassure my fellow gremlin-brained tumblrs that their meds are perfectly safe to take!

And to be fair, I've gotten quite a few reblogs with tags and additions and comments saying thank you, I was afraid to take my meds, even though they help me, but now I'm reassured that I shouldn't be scared.

And I think that's a positive outcome.

On the other hand, I'm getting some very angry comments from some people who seem to think I'm attempting to spread a vicious, intentional lie claiming that people with ADHD are immune to stimulant addiction and that I'm going to do all kinds of harm, presumably on purpose, because there's nothing I enjoy more than ruining other people's lives! 🙌

I would assume that anyone who thought about this for more than three seconds would realize that's not the case, but this is tumblr.

I've gotten angry rants ranging from "this author you've never heard of wrote a book where he defined addiction as inherently harmful, and therefore you're harming people by saying being addicted to something is not inherently bad!" to "STOP SPREADING MISINFORMATION!!!" to "OP is making statements that are incompatible with reality!" and folks? I'm real fucking tired of it.

Is it possible that my doctors are wrong? Of course! Doctors get things wrong all the time, especially when it comes to stuff like ADHD! But yelling at me from across the internet and accusing me of lying is not helpful.

There is nothing I can do about the original post. I can reblog it with an addition clarifying that yes, everyone is capable of becoming psychologically dependent on basically anything in a way that would be considered addiction, and yes, that includes ADHD people and their meds.

To be clear, this does NOT contradict the intent of my original post: that ADHD meds are good, you should take them, medication making you feel good is nothing to fear, pleasure is not the same as addiction, addiction is not inherently dangerous, and according to my doctors, who are fallible human beings but my most trusted source of information as of the writing of that post, ADHD meds are not physically addictive - as in, your BODY will not become dependent on them to function. This is the definition of "addiction" I had in mind when I wrote that post - and I think in a lot of cases the thing upsetting people is that we don't even actually disagree on what we're trying to say, but there was a miscommunication in terms of what I actually meant.

If I could go back and edit that original post and have it change everywhere it's been reblogged, I absolutely would. I would clarify where my information was coming from and what definition of "addiction" I intended, and reiterate that even if something can cause physical dependence, that doesn't necessarily mean you shouldn't take it.

But I can't. That post is out there now and there's not a damn thing I can do about it.

Keep this in mind as you go forward in your tumblr journey, friends. If you come across a semi-popular post with a mistake in it, you can bet every bit of your ass that OP has heard about it many, many times already, probably in very impolite terms, and there is nothing they can do about the original post. Unless they're a massively popular blog, a reblog with an addition or correction will not be seen by the people spreading around the original.

And for fuck's sake, stop assuming ill intent on the part of people who say something incorrect online. There are people out there who intentionally spread misinformation, but those people are rare, and usually trying to get you to not vote democrat in US elections, not trying to encourage you to take your fucking meds. If you see a mistake, it's probably an honest one, and if you really want to correct it, be a decent fucking human being, be polite and kind, and try assuming good intentions on the part of the person who said it.

The person telling you to take your meds is not your fucking enemy.

Oh, and do me a favor and reblog this, please. I actually have very few followers so no one will see it if it doesn't get reblogged. Thank you.

#adhd #actually adhd #medication #ritalin #concerta #methylphenidate #addiction #misinformation #tumblr reading comprehension #stop being dicks to strangers online

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