10.01.08 - Selling Sickness

“In his book, Selling Sickness, medical journalist Ray Moynihan reveals comments made by the head of Merck pharmaceuticals thirty years ago. The CEO of Merck was distressed that his company's products were limited to sick people. . . . He dreamed of making drugs for healthy people so they could ‘sell to everyone.’

“. . . Statins are already some of the most widely prescribed drugs. . . . Currently, the drug companies are pushing for statins to be used to treat everything from Alzheimer's, to diabetes and arthritis. They have also reduced the threshold for treatment of high cholesterol. In fact, a recent Pfizer study recommends statins for patients with ‘normal’ cholesterol levels. Other companies argue that statins should be taken by EVERY person over 55. Some medical professionals are even recommending these drugs for children. . . .

“Two weeks ago, an FDA advisory panel approved the statin drug Crestor as a ‘preventive’ medicine. This is the first time such an approval has been granted. . . . This dangerous statin drug can now be marketed to people who have no history or risk factors for heart disease. This is what the drug companies have been looking to accomplish for decades – to turn healthy people into patients. . . . Jon Herring, Overwhelming Proof that Natural Medicine Works, Jan. 1, 2010:

In a similar vein, Alix Spiegel (NPR) wrote How a Bone Disease Grew to Fit the Prescription: “. . . Pharmaceutical and device industries ‘disease monger’—in other words, turn otherwise healthy people into patients. By use of the bone mineral density test (BMD) they have created a population of middle-aged and older female customers in need of treatment for an invented disease called osteopenia. The drug companies have used similar deceptive means with prostate cancer screening (PSA testing) to lure otherwise healthy men into the prostate cancer businesses. Enthusiastic recommendations for mammography and colonoscopy screening for breast and colon cancer have similar, but not so blatantly obvious, connections and business-enhancing motivations and effects. . . .

“The paradox of our health care system is . . . drug companies produce incredible drugs that can greatly relieve suffering. But one way they profit from those drugs is to extend their use to as many people as possible, which frequently means that medications are used in populations with milder and milder versions of a disease, so that the risks of medicating can come to outweigh the benefits.

“. . . Caleb Alexander, a pharmaco-epidemiologist at the University of Chicago, says the dynamic is well understood: ‘There's a powerful economic incentive for pharmaceutical firms to expand the boundaries of the use of different therapies. So whether you consider treatments for osteoporosis or treatments for depression or treatments for high cholesterol — in all of these settings — pharmaceutical firms stand to benefit if the therapies for these diseases are broadly used. . . . Even if they're used among people who have very mild forms of these diseases.’” Read related article...

Diabetic Pills Kill

Dr. John McDougall wrote in an annotated article, “Most physicians believe that better control of blood sugars means better long-term outcomes for the patients and they enthusiastically prescribed these medications. Research proves otherwise. Diabetic medications are approved by the FDA for market based upon their ability to lower blood sugar levels, not based on any improvements in the quality or quantity of the patients' lives.

In a major study, a popular diabetic medication, Avandia (rosiglitazone), given at a dosage of 4 mg twice daily, on average, decreased hemoglobin A1c levels by 1.5 percentage points, reduced fasting plasma sugar by 76 mg/dL (4.22 mmol/L), and reduced insulin resistance by 25%. These improved numbers should have meant healthier patients, but they didn't. On May 21, 2007 the New York Times reported, patients taking Avandia had 66 percent more heart attacks, 39 percent more strokes and 20 percent more deaths from cardiovascular-related problems. Since 1972, the Physicians’ Desk Reference (PDR) descriptions of most diabetic pills have included two paragraphs in bold print that begin with: Special Warning on Increased Risk of Cardiovascular Mortality. This warning is given because a very commonly prescribed class of oral medication, called sulfonylureas, increases the risk of cardiovascular death by 2 ½ times compared to diet treatment alone.”