Big Pharma's Dirty Little Secret

[Guest guest]

Do essential oils work?

 

Are they dangerous?

 

Are they expensive?

 

Will their use ever be legitimized by the system?

 

You folks can answer those questions for yourself. As for me .. I've

been fortunate enough to be able to avoid an over-the-counter or

prescription medication since 1996 .. nor have I visited a doctor in

that time except for routine physical exams.

 

Y'all keep smiling. :-) Butch http://www.AV-AT.com

 

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http://www.cancer-coverup.com/newsletter/03-2004/

 

Big Pharma's Dirty Little SecretMonthly Newsletter |

www.cancer-coverup.com <http://www.cancer-coverup.com/> |

March 2004

 

 

BY KATHLEEN B. DEOUL

 

A stunning admission from a senior official of the pharmaceutical giant

GlaxoSmithKline has vindicated critics of the drug industry. At a London

conference last December, Dr. Allen Roses, a senior vice president of

GlaxoSmithKline candidly admitted that most prescription drugs work only

part of the time, and in many instances less than HALF of the time!

 

Dr. Roses, one of the world's leading geneticists did not intend his

comments as a criticism of existing prescription drugs. Rather, he was

arguing for something called " pharmacogenomics, " the use of human

genetics to create " tailored " drugs for patients with different genes.

This method, he believes would result in more effective pharmaceuticals

and elimination of what he calls the " trial and error " method of

prescribing drugs currently employed by most physicians.

 

While his vision of a future in which drugs are custom-designed for

particular patients or groups of patients may be intriguing, the notion

of physicians writing prescriptions by guess and by gosh is chilling.

 

And how bad is the problem?

 

DRUGS DON'T WORK

According to Dr. Roses, the problem is much worse than anyone might have

imagined.

 

He told the audience that fully 90% of prescription drugs only work 30%

to 50% of the time!

 

More important, some of the least effective drugs are the ones whose

failure to be effective would have the most serious consequences.

 

For example drugs to treat Alzheimer's disease work 30% of the time or

less!

 

Cancer drugs are at best effective 25% of the time, and in some

instances, the effectiveness can be as little as 2%!

 

Drugs intended to treat hepatitis C are effective less than half the time.

 

Even drugs for more common and less life-threatening conditions have

poor track records.

 

For instance, drugs to treat migraines are at best a 50/50 proposition.

 

Similarly, incontinence pharmaceuticals only work about 40% of the time.

 

Even widely used and expensive COX-2 pain relievers like Vioxx and

Celebrex are far less effective than the public would be lead to believe.

 

What is perhaps most shocking about Dr. Roses' admission is that it came

as no surprise to other drug industry executives. One industry expert

asked to comment on Dr. Roses' claim said " Roses is a smart guy and what

he is saying will surprise the public, but not his colleagues. "

 

As it turns out, the fact that drugs do not work is one of Big Pharma's

best kept dirty little secrets.

 

But, what about doctors? Don't they know whether or not the drugs they

are prescribing are effective?

 

The short answer is no.

 

In this era of managed care and 7 minute time limits on patient visits,

few doctors take the time to really research the drugs they prescribe.

Instead, they rely on the handouts dutifully delivered by the " detail "

men and women - the fancy name for salespersons used by Big Pharma - to

assess the efficacy of new prescription items.

 

CONSUMER ADS A CONSUMER CON

But that's not all.

 

So-called " direct to consumer " advertising encourages patients to

request specific drugs, and more often than not, doctors go along with

those requests.

 

For example incontinence drugs are widely promoted in television ads

that imply that they can provide miraculous improvement in this

condition. What the ads do not say is that the drugs, to the extent that

they work at all, are effective less than HALF THE TIME! More important,

they don't mention that the drugs have potentially serious side effects.

Given the significant quality of life consequences of incontinence, it

is no surprise that the ads have caused a sharp increase in patients

requesting such products or that doctors have given in to their patients

and prescribed them.

 

But these drugs still represent an improvement in efficacy - right?

 

Wrong!

 

THE OTHER DIRTY LITTLE SECRET

Two recent studies have exposed another of Big Pharma's dirty little

secrets: many of the new and expensive drugs they're pushing on

patients and doctors are not as effective as the ones they're intended

to replace!

 

Researchers in St. Louis examined claims data from a major Midwestern

health provider to see if the actual results of using expensive pain

relievers like Vioxx and Celebrex matched the assumed efficacy of the

studies used to demonstrate their value.

 

The results of their analysis were reported in the November, 2003 issue

of the Journal of Managed Care.

 

One of the things they examined most closely was the rate at which

patients taking COX-2 inhibitors were also using drugs to prevent

heartburn or ulcers.

 

According to the research presented to win approval of these drugs,

patients taking them shouldn't have to take the anti-ulcer and heartburn

medications.

 

Well, as it turns out, like much drug company research, the claim was a

lot of hooey!

 

Patients given the newer COX-2 drugs were also given prescriptions for

anti-ulcer and heartburn medicines. The real stunner, though, was that

the patients taking the newer drugs were actually prescribed the

anti-ulcer and heartburn drugs MORE often than those on the older pain

relievers - 20% for the new drugs vs. 18% for the old!

 

Now, understand what's happening here. A bottle containing 50 capsules

of a COX-2 inhibitor like Vioxx or Celebrex is going to set you back

around $180.00. In contrast, you can buy a bottle of 200 generic

ibuprofen tablets for around $13.00, 500 acetaminophen (Tylenol) tablets

for around $12.00 or 500 generic aspirin tablets for around $7.00!

 

The whole rationale for taking the more expensive drug is that you

wouldn't have to take a second drug to protect against ulcer or

heartburn with the newer medication. Otherwise why would you pay the

extra $160.00? As it turns out, that's not true, so all the hype about

COX-2 inhibitors is little more than away for Big Pharma to fatten its

profits at the consumer's expense - once again!

 

Still, the phony assumptions about COX-2 inhibitors only tell half of

the story.

 

The other half comes from another study published in the Journal of

Managed Care Pharmacy.

 

THE REST OF THE STORY

In a September, 2003 article, researcher Brenda K. Motheral, Ph.D.

examined the cost-effectiveness of ulcer treatments.

 

Currently, most physicians prescribe expensive drugs like Prilosec or

Nexium, the so-called Proton Pump Inhibitors or PPI's as the first line

of attack. If that should fail, most often they recommend surgery. The

only problem is that the assumption underlying the PPI treatment - that

ulcers are caused by excess stomach acid, aspirin, or stress - is wrong!

Researchers have discovered that in 90% of the cases, they are caused by

a bacterial infection that can be easily treated with a combination of

cheap antibiotics and bismuth subsalicylate e.g. Pepto-Bismol!

 

According to Dr. Motheral, the bismuth-based therapy is both cheaper and

more effective than using PPI's. This is no small consideration. Ulcer

medications are among the most widely prescribed, and are costly. A

typical prescription for a PPI runs between $150 and $200 per month, and

patients generally have to take them for their entire lives. This can

come to hundreds of thousands of dollars over time - indeed PPI's

account for fully 8.9% of total drug costs and a huge proportion of drug

company profits.

 

But they represent something else as well: hundreds of thousands of

dollars per patient that are not available for other medical care.

 

And keep in mind - even when an ulcer is surgically removed, if the

cause is a bacteria, it will come back! So the risk and expense of the

surgery would have been for nothing.

 

Dr. Motheral put it in perspective " Given that patients pay portions of

premiums and copays, promoting cost-effective treatment decisions

ultimately controls not only payers costs buy also patients'

out-of-pocket expenditures. "

 

It's not just the St. Louis researchers, however, who are blowing the

lid off Big Pharma's efficacy scam. Take for example high blood pressure

drugs.

 

Last year, Big Pharma got a windfall when the National Institutes of

Health moved the goalposts on high blood pressure. It used to be that

blood pressure of 130/85 was considered normal. But late in 2002, the

Institute of Medicine decided that was no longer the case and created a

new category " prehypertensive, " for people with blood pressures between

120/80 and 139/89.

 

All of a sudden Big Pharma got tens of millions of customers for its

expensive high blood pressure drugs!

 

What they didn't know was that at that very moment, someone was about to

pull the rug out from under them.

 

A December 2002 article in the Journal of the American Medical

Association (JAMA) reported the findings of a study encompassing over

42,000 individuals comparing the benefits of four types of high blood

pressure drugs - diuretics, ACE inhibitors, calcium channel blockers and

alpha-adrenergic blockers.

 

The news was, to say the least, unwelcome in Big Pharma's corporate offices.

 

What the researchers discovered was that cheap, generic diuretic drugs

that have been around for years were far superior to the new and

expensive high blood pressure medication Big Pharma has been touting.

 

The individual results were stunning. In the case of ACE inhibitors, the

patients averaged 2 points higher on systolic pressure and had a 15%

higher risk of stroke. For African-American participants, the risk of

stroke was 40% higher!

 

For calcium channel blockers systolic blood pressure was only about 1%

higher but they had a 38% greater risk of developing heart failure. The

portion of the study using the alpha-adrenergic blocker was actually

stopped because people taking the drugs had a 25% higher rate of heart

disease than those on diuretics and were suffering double the rate of

heart failure!

 

Given these facts, it would make sense for the medical community to push

diuretics, but that doesn't seem to be happening. There's too much money

at stake for Big Pharma to give up their hypertensive drug cash cows.

 

For example Pfizer's Norvasc, which sells for around $172 for a month's

supply was projected to earn the company $4 billion in 2003, and that's

just one example. Like Norvasc, most of these drugs, regardless of

class, cost around $175 for a month's supply. With tens of millions of

new potential customers, Big Pharma is not about to give up its market

without a fight.

 

One of their latest tactics is to simply stop manufacturing diuretics.

 

Doctors in Norway recently protested Merck & Co.'s decision to stop

making Dichlotride, the only pure form of hydrochlorotiazide (the most

commonly used thiazide) available. There is no generic alternative

available on the market.

 

Although Norway's situation is unusual in having no generic alternative,

it is not apparently unique, as several other European countries have

reported difficulty in obtaining the thiazide diuretics as well.

 

Although the problem has not yet spread to the United States, can there

by any doubt that what Big Pharma is really doing in Europe is testing

whether it can get away with suppressing a cheaper alternative to its

expensive and ineffective anti-hypertensives? Can there be any doubt

that they will do the same thing here if they believe they can get away

with it?

 

Not if you know Big Pharma!

 

REGULATORS FAIL TO ACT

Where, you might ask is the government? After all, how can Big Pharma

advertise these drugs as being effective when they are not? Doesn't the

government regulate pharmaceutical advertisements? Won't it make sure

that they are truthful?

 

The answers to those questions are yes, and no.

 

Yes, the government is supposed to regulate pharmaceutical company ads.

Specifically, they are supposed to look out for ads that are misleading.

With Big Pharma spending over $2.8 billion on direct to consumer ads,

this certainly is an important task. The trouble is that the FDA is

falling down on the job.

 

Since direct to consumer ads were first allowed in 1999, the proportion

of FDA citations per complaint regarding drug advertisers has steadily

dropped.

 

In the most recent year for which complete data are available, the FDA

cited one company for each eight complaints it received. The year

before, however, it had cited one company for each seven complaints.

 

What is more important, though, is that it took on average six months

from the time an ad campaign was initiated until some action was taken.

This meant that a misleading ad could run for HALF A YEAR before

anything was done about it. Even then the most likely action would be to

ask the drug company to stop running the ad.

 

And that's just the average!

 

It took the FDA a full year to tell the giant Aventis pharmaceutical

company to stop running misleading ads about its drug Taxotere.

 

But even when warning letters go out, they're hardly more than a slap on

the wrist.

 

FDA Commissioner Mark McClellan has promised to make enforcement

measures tougher, but only time will tell if he means what he says.