The Newest Drug Company Mantra
In an article in the LA Times, Greg Critser discusses the
reasons behind the plummeting profits of the pharmaceutical
industry. Drug company officials have offered up reasons such as
generic competition, overzealous regulators, trial lawyers, bad
public relations and the high cost of research.
Neither Safe Nor Effective
Critser proposes a different reason: the pills they offer are
neither safe nor effective. He points out that, according to the
industry itself, only about half of the new medicines launched
since 1990 are significant improvements over older and cheaper
products.
At the same time, problems from side effects are on the rise,
especially now that one in six Americans take three or more
prescription drugs daily, often in untested combinations
The result? Only about half of patients stay on any given
regimen.
"Persistence and Compliance"
The industry's response, however, has been to increase efforts
to promote "persistence and compliance" -- in other words, ways
to keep a patient taking pills, even if the patient doesn't like
it.
Few Programs Look at Side Effects
The rise of P&C programs mean that huge amounts of money are
spent getting people to ingest pills, and less and less is being
spent to discover new ones.
Meanwhile, patients may be encouraged to continue taking a drug
that can be harmful,and few P&C programs even bother to look
at the reasons patients might stop taking pills, such as side
effects, adverse events and special individual sensitivities.
Los Angeles Times November 20, 2005
Dr. Mercola's Comment:You may be familiar with Greg Critser
from his book Fat Land, which I reviewedtwo years ago. Now he's
focused his energy on the conventional and fatally flawed health
care paradigm once again in his newest book, Generation Rx.
It isn't bad enough that the drug companies spend billions on
direct-to-consumer advertisingto influence you to purchase
drugs, but they also spend an average of over $10,000 EVERY year
on EVERY physician in the United Statesto brainwash them to the
same conclusion. That is over $16 billion every year.
Persistence and compliance programs are the new evil tools that
the multinational drug companies are now using to deceive you.
Superficially they sound like something that is really serving
you, but nothing could be further from the truth-- its primary
purpose is to increase their bottom line far more than your
health.
These persistence and compliance programs started as joint
ventures between drug companies and HMOs in the form of phone
calls or e-mails from "health counselors" -- better known to the
rest of the world as telemarketers -- to remindyou to refill
your prescriptions, even whenyou don't need to or shouldn't.
And who's paying for all that marketing slight-of-hand that's
overmedicating the world? That's right, folks, you are.
That said, you can take steps to begin optimizing your health
and lessen your dependence on expensive and potentially toxic
drugs today, with all the free tools available on my Web site. A
good place to start: Learn how you can retool your diet to fight
and prevent disease by eating foods better suited for your
body's unique metabolic type with my free test.