I was not look­ing for this kind of a book last time we were at the library, I was just brows­ing slowly, try­ing to help Baby Blab to go to sleep.

And then I saw it, it grabbed my atten­tion and I plopped it on top of the pile of books we had des­ig­nated to cart back home — usu­ally quite a siz­able load.

What an eye open­ing read this was. I was already quite sus­pi­cious of the drugs being flung here and there for just about any ail­ment (real or not) under the sun. I didnt need any con­vinc­ing to keep them away from my and my loved ones’ bod­ies. But this cemented my view with quite a lot of substance.

This book goes into quite a lot of detail about the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal busi­ness — its set up, premise, wheel­ings and deal­ings, influ­ence and ten­ta­cles probed deep into just about every crevice of the gov­ern­ment and med­ical estab­lish­ment. Its about the abuse of tax payer money, that are fund­ing the vast major­ity of research into dis­cov­er­ing drugs, which are later sold back to them at exu­ber­ant prices. About the lack of inno­va­tion on the part of the drug com­pa­nies them­selves. Its about the dis­eases they sell us and a whole heap of dis­turb­ing facts sur­round­ing the indus­try. The author, Marcia Angell, M.D., is the for­mer edi­tor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine and as one would expect, her claims are well backed up and palat­able for the mind. This aint some crazed drug rep, scorned by an untimely dis­missal a girl that didnt want to put out on the sec­ond date.

I will not even attempt to give you a short ver­sion of „The Truth About the Drug Companies”, you just need to read the whole lot, as its all con­nected and part of the big picture.

But here are a few quotes:

„The ALLHAT study was eight years long and involved over 42,000 peo­ple at more than six hun­dred clin­ics, the largest clin­i­cal trial of the treat­ment of high blood pres­sure ever done. It com­pared four types of drugs: ..Norvasc, the fifth best sell­ing drug in the world in 2002; …Cardura, and also sold gener­i­cally as dox­a­zosin; an angiotensin-converting-enzime (ACE) inhibitor — sold by AstraZeneca as Zestril and by Merck as Prinivil..; and a generic diuretic (*water pill”) of type that has been on the mar­ket for over fifty years.

The results, reported in 2002 in The Journal of the American Medical Association, were star­tling. To nearly everyone’s sur­prise, the old time diuretic turned out to be just as good for low­er­ing blood pres­sure, and actu­ally bet­ter for pre­vent­ing some of the dev­as­tat­ing com­pli­ca­tions of hight blood pres­sure — mainly heart dis­ease and strokes…

Yet over the years the newer drugs had largely sup­planted diuret­ics as treat­ment for high blood pressure. ”

And:

„…Prozac lost its patent pro­tec­tion in August 2001 and is now sold as generic flu­ox­e­tine at about 80 per­cent less than it used to cost..

But that doesn’t mean Eli Lilly just gave up. It tried to stay in the SSRI busi­ness by patent­ing a weekly dosage form of Prozac. And in a move even more auda­cious than the switches from Prilosec to Nexium or from Claritin to Clarinex, it renamed Prozac Sarafem, col­ored it pink and laven­der, and got FDA approval to mar­ket it for „pre­men­strual dys­phoric dis­or­der,” its term for severe pre­men­strual symp­toms. Same drug, same dose, but priced three and a half times higher than generic Prozac at my local pharmacy.”

Most peo­ple will find it hard to look at this infor­ma­tion with clar­ity. It is hard to shake off bil­lions of dol­lars spent on mak­ing us believe we need all these drugs, brib­ing and ‘edu­cat­ing’ our doc­tors and sup­port­ing the most pow­er­ful lobby groups in Washington.

I know you wont run out and read this book, but will you at least pay atten­tion to this — the author’s advise on how to pro­tect your inter­ests. When your doc­tor is sug­gest­ing a cer­tain drug for you, how about ask­ing a few sim­ple ques­tions, before putting it into your body:

” What is the evi­dence that this drug is bet­ter than an alter­na­tive drug or some other approach to treatment?

Has the evi­dence been pub­lished in a peer-reviewed med­ical jour­nal? Or are you relieing on infor­ma­tion from drug com­pany representatives?

Is this drug bet­ter only because it is given at a higher dose? Would a cheaper drug be as effec­tive if it were given at an equiv­a­lent dose?

Are the ben­e­fits worth the side effects, the expense, and the risk of inter­ac­tions with other drugs I take?

Is this a free sam­ple? If so, is there a generic drug or an equiv­a­lent drug I can use that is cheaper when the free sam­ples run out?

Do you have any finan­cial ties with the com­pany that makes this drug? For exam­ple, do you con­sult for the com­pany? ..Are you being paid to put me on this drug and enroll me in a drug com­pany study? Do you make time for vis­its from drug com­pany representatives?”

Feel funny about it? Dont. Its your body and health at stake, dont allow it to be used and abused for the sake of prof­its. It doesnt help drug com­pa­nies and doc­tors when you are healthy, think about it. They dont have inter­est in your health. You do.

And to fin­ish a seri­ous post, here is the same mes­sage, but with a smile:

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