YOUR PHARMACIST KNOWS FOR SURE
Recently I read about how (some) pharmaceutical companies have rushed newer drugs through in order to be able to market and sell some of their patented drugs before the patent expiration dates are met. Because they are using the public as guinea pigs while trying out certain newly-formulated drugs, case studies have often found major problems with specific drugs that millions of folks have already begun to use. Do the pharmaceutical companies put large printed warnings on their labels? No, they most definitely do not. Do they stick the warnings in with minute printed material so long and tedious to read that a person could understandably go blind trying to read it or turn gray due the length? Yes, they most definitely do.
For what reason would pharmaceutical companies take such a risk? Take a wild guess! Would you believe billions in revenue? Well, if you haven’t believed it before, you should start.
The FDA slapped the hand of Merck Pharmaceutical for putting Fosamax and Vioxx on the market after a mere six-month review. Another that Merck zoomed through clinical trials – then marketed it after the FDA warned them about “neuropsychiatric events” such as high agitation, aggression, nightmares, depression, insomnia and suicidal thinking in children – was Singulair, an allergy and asthma medication. A fifteen –year-old boy died by his own hand after taking Singulair in 2008. By 2010, Merck had already raked in $5 billion for the company. The patent for Singulair expired in 2012.
Are you familiar with a drug called “Zyprexa?” Have you also gained substantial weight while taking Zyprexa? If so, the added pounds are probably not a coincidence. Zyprexa was going to be EIi Lilly’s next big bang as it was to replace Prozac, a widely used antidepressant. And while Eli Lilly settled charges that it wasn’t forthcoming with its findings that the drug was linked to high blood sugar levels for diabetics, and that they even illegally marketed the drug for dementia, Zyprexa made another 5 billion dollars in 2010 – out-earning Prozac because the Eli Lilly company marketed it to the poor and disadvantaged, making it one of the top Medicaid drugs in the country when it offered financial help and “free service” to states buying mental illness drugs such as Zyprexa. Amazingly, twenty different states took Eli Lilly up on its offer. Finally, Zyprexa’s patent ran out in 2012.
There have been others as well. Seroquel, made in the United Kingdom by the company AstraZeneca, earned well over five billion dollars in 2010. Again another drug marketed to poor children, it was purchased for the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice by the boatload instead of Advil, an over-the-counter medication. Seroquel had already been used, unapproved, for military personnel to enable them to sleep or in treating PTSD. The reports began pouring in involving veterans and their sudden deaths of cardiac arrest while using the drug. In 2009, Seroquel was the “number-two drug at the VA” costing $125.4 million in tax dollars. In 2011 the FDA finally issued new warnings about Seroquel and its extended-release version, saying “neither should be used in combination with as many as 12 other medications, for the elderly and people with heart disease because of the clear cardiac risks.” Seroquel was originally approved in 1997. One must ask: what took so long, causing so many people to die before this was figured out?
Last year Oxycontin and several other “opioids” caused the deaths of 17,000 people!
An article on Alternet commented on a report by the Journal Sentinel, stating that that number was four times higher than in 2003 and that “the increase has been fueled in part by doctors and pain-advocacy organizations that receive money from drug companies and make misleading claims about the safety and effectiveness of opioids, including that addiction is rare.” In 2009 The American Geriatrics Society used pharma-linked experts to make up new guidelines specifying opioids for all patients with moderate to severe pain, instead of using an over-the-counter pain medication such as Advil, Aleve, or even Tylenol. Can you hear the dollars ringing up?
When your doctor or whomever you see for health care decides to prescribe a medication, do you accept the prescription, have it filled, and take the pills without question? Many of us do. Having the bad luck (or maybe not) of being allergic to all sorts of medications, and because I have a chronic medical condition (I am epileptic), I am extremely cautious about whatever I take in combination with my anti-seizure medication. Drug companies produce new whammo “fix everything” potions and pills every single day and they do it for one reason: PROFIT. To actually know if a medication I have been recently prescribed might be wrong for me, before I even consider taking it, I ask our pharmacist. He’s the only person I trust. Pharmacists are the only experts truly qualified to answer medication questions. They should know what drug(s) you are taking, whether another drug added to it will be beneficial or harmful, what the side effects may be and whether you should take it. We use the Moorhead Drug in the Moorhead Center Mall, and whenever I have a question about anything medicine-wise – whether it’s an over-the-counter headache remedy or something my doctor may prescribe – the first person I consult is the pharmacist on duty at our drugstore.
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