If you have been a reader of my blogs, you know I do not take kindly to what are called the Big Pharmas...
Yet even I can be disgusted more than I already was as I just finished reading this book
by Melody Petersen:Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs
She was the drug industry reporter for the
New York Times from 1999 to 2003 and boy did she do some research!
The disgusting thesis of the book is that the big pharmas "create" diseases and ailments in order to sell a pill that they are designing or have already made! It's that simple. Are they trying to cure anything? Not really - just pushing pills - especially onto older Americans!
From what I gather, they tried to push the pills in Europe - but Europeans are a bit more sophisticated as are their governments and so did not allow some sales.. Here? Big pharmas run the government and no one says NO to them, their money or their pills.
Got a problem? Take a pill! Pill cause a problem? Take another! That pill create a problem? Here is yet another pill.
Do we care if you are over-pilled and the pills can - and do - kill you? Not at all - we make money and that's all that matters!
An article in the
Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported that an estimated
106,000 hospitalized patients die each year from drugs which, by medical standards, are properly prescribed and properly administered.
More than two million suffer serious side effects. [emphasis added]
Reference: Lazarou J, Pomeranz BH, Corey PN: "Incidence of adverse drug reactions in hospitalized patients." JAMA 1998;279:1200
Adverse drug reactions from prescribed drugs - not street drugs - is the 4th leading killer in the USA and these adverse reactions have been on the increase since 1998.
I had my thyroid gland nuked 20 years ago and so must take that one med.. I have steadfastly refused to add pills for "hormone replacement, "stave off osteoporosis", "protect your heart" and other such maladies.
I am not suggesting you stop taking meds, but I do suggest you sit down with your physician and talk about the list of meds you take and if yo really need all those newly made up ones that docs are paid to prescribe.
That's my soap box for another day - [and I've said that before] - but yes - most docs are paid well by the big pharmas to get you to take and keep taking your daily doses of pills!
