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Drug Companies Thrive When You Are Sick

By Mark Mogavero

I have a question for you:

Why do Pharmaceutical companies spend billions each year in advertising their products to the American public when their products are not available without a prescription from a doctor? Think about that for a moment, because it is a very important concept to understand. Why would a company want you, the patient, to ask your doctor about a particular drug? Is it not the doctor’s responsibility to prescribe the correct medication for you without any outside influence affecting the doctor’s decisions? Why do you have to ask someone for a free trial of a prescription drug?

The Journal of the American Medical Association featured a study in its April 27th, 2005 edition concerning the ability of prescription drug advertisements and the influence they may have on patients’ requests for medication to their doctors. In the article entitled “Influence of Patients’ Requests for Direct-to-Consumer Advertised Antidepressants” (http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/293/16/1995), a randomized trial was used by crossing two conditions, major depression or adjustment disorder with a depressed mood. The participants made 298 unannounced visits to physicians with 3 request types for brand specific medication, general meds, or no request. Here’s the conclusion:

“Patients’ requests have a profound effect on physician prescribing in major depression and adjustment disorder. Direct-to-consumer advertising may have competing effects on quality, potentially both averting underuse and promoting overuse.”

While I do understand that this is a relatively small study in terms of numbers, the setting for the study was offices of primary care physicians in Sacamento, CA; San Francisco, CA; and Rochester, NY. I guess the drug companies have an effective marketing campaign. Must be nice to have over half of the nation’s population on prescription drugs….

Money. Year in and year out, Pharmaceutical companies rank near the top of the list of most profitable companies. We get sick, they get paid. Our cholesterol is a little outside of the so-called “acceptable range” and they get paid. You eat spicy food, they get paid. It goes on and on. These companies thrive when you are sick. What is their incentive to help you get healthy, so you don’t rely on their products? It’s a question that I have never seen addressed. The pharmaceutical industry has become the most powerful lobbying organization in Washington, and each year companies are producing dangerous products that cause thousands of deaths, and what’s being done about it? You guessed it, nothing.

I was perusing (great word, if I might say so) a recent health magazine, and I read an ad for a product designed to relieve migraine headaches. I occasionally suffer from migraines, so this is a product that may be of help to me when symptoms arise. The ad tells me to see the important information on the reverse, so I flip the page over, and begin to read. Here are a few of the statements:

Question: How does IMITREX® work?
Answer: How IMITREX works is not completely understood….

Some of the side effects listed:

“pain or tightness in the chest or throat when using IMITREX. If this happens to you, discuss it with your doctor before using any more IMITREX. If the pain is severe, or does not go away, call your doctor immediately. Shortness of breath; wheeziness; heart throbbing; swelling of the eylids, face or lips; or a skin rash, skin lumps, or hives happen rarely, but if they happen to you, tell your doctor immediately. Do not take any more IMITREX unless your doctor tells you to.”

These were just a few of the side effects listed, and I printed them in their complete statement, so I am not paraphrasing (I hate when people only give you the bits and pieces of a story so they can give it their own twist). With this product, it seems like the cure is a hell of a lot worse than the disease. Migraines are painful enough, I don’t need my chest and throat to hurt as well. I need to breathe, don’t need my face to swell, or to break out in hives. And the fact that they really don’t know how their own product works is a huge red flag. Think about that, pills that are administered, but not understood. I’m sure they have done testing, and they have FDA approval to administer the drug, but let’s get real here. If a product caused the same type of conditions to occur in a person, but it wasn’t a prescription drug, the media would be all over it and the company would be told by consumer advocate groups to remove the product from the shelves immediately. Does Ephedra come to mind?

I cannot, for the life of me, understand why Ephedra was removed from the market. I am not saying it is not dangerous or potentially harmful to those who misuse it. In every single case where Ephedra was found to be a contributing factor in a person’s death, the concentrations found in the body were a result of an overdose, an intentional misuse. I’ve read much of the material surrounding these deaths, and in each case the dosages required to match the levels found in the blood were several times the recommended dosage provided by the manufacturer of the product. Should Tylenol be taken off the shelves because people choose to overdose on it? How about Ny-Quil? How about Vioxx? As of the writing of this book, the FDA has yet to pull Vioxx off the market, although reports indicate it may be responsible for 50,000 deaths. Let me repeat: 50,000 DEATHS!!!

I may be off on a little tangent, but if you think the FDA really has your health interests at heart, think again. It’s all about money. The following is a quote from the FDA’s website concerning approval of FDA Regulated Products:

FDA reviews the results of laboratory, animal and human clinical testing done by companies to determine if the product they want to put on the market is safe and effective. FDA does not develop or test products itself. The Agency does this pre-market review for new human drugs and biologics (such as vaccines, blood products, biotechnology products, and gene therapy), complex medical devices, food and color additives, infant formulas, and animal drugs.

FDA has streamlined its review process for medical products in recent years to help speed important new treatments to patients. For example, the average review time for an innovative new drug is now only 6 months, and some have been approved even faster. (http://www.fda.gov/opacom/7approvl.html May 26, 2005)

If I read that correctly, I am to understand that the FDA relies upon the company to prove that its product is safe? Sounds to me like there is some room for negotiation when a company really wants to get a drug to market. The fact that the FDA is proud of being able to approve drugs in six months or less is downright frightening.

I know there is a lot more to this process than I am addressing here, so don’t blast me. But I think I was able to point out some really alarming features of the FDA’s approval process. If this is an agency whose responsibility it is to keep dangerous foods and medications out of our bodies, and they rely upon the companies who are trying to profit from the drugs they are submitting to the FDA to prove they are safe, how can we place a lot of faith in FDA approval?

About the Author:

Mark Mogavero is the owner of Dynamic Personal Training, located in Verona, NJ. His website is www.dynamicpersonaltraining.com