Comparison of Canadian online pharmacies with conventional pharmacies for erectile dysfunction drugs. The Cost of Convenience and discretion
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Introduction Erectile dysfunction (ED) is a common condition affecting about 50% of men over the age of 40. ED can be related to cardiovascular disease and diabetes requiring further evaluation and workup, unfortunately many men with ED commonly avoid seeking treatment for reasons such as embarrassment. In the past few years, multiple online pharmacies offering easy access to ED medications have emerged, advertising easy online forms, no conventional doctors visit and discreet delivery to their home. We sought to compare the prices of five popular online ED pharmacies with conventional pharmacies, hypothesizing that online pharmacies would come at increased cost to patients. Methods The five online pharmacies were found on the first result page of a google search for “ED drugs online Canada”. Consumer prices for Tadalafil and Sildenafil were acquired through available website information or by contacting customer service. The prices were expressed as price per pill and compared with four conventional pharmacies in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Pricing differences were expressed as a percentage. Results When comparing the price per pill of the smallest order of tabs that can be purchased, the price of ED medications from online pharmacies was on average 15% higher without including the dispensing fee of the conventional pharmacy comparators. Once taking dispensing fees into account, the cost ED medications from conventional pharmacies was about 3-4% higher compared to online conventional pharmacies. Dispensing fees ranged from $12.99 to $16.00 per order. Savings could be seen with conventional pharmacies when order quantities increased as the dispensing fee is fixed per order. Conclusions Online pharmacies in Canada that boast convenience and discretion to customers offer similar pricing to conventional pharmacies. Despite their competitive pricing, their focus on discretion further perpetuates common stereotypes of ED that may prevent men from seeking help from their care providers.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.019 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.010 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".