LifeCare Chiropractic

The Best Chiropractic Care in Mesa, Arizona

Drug Research

Profiting from Pain: Where Prescription Drugs Dollars Go – (09-12-02)

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Profiting from Pain: Where Prescription Drugs Dollars Go

While this is a very long report, I can summarize it for you. Contrary to popular belief, most of pharmaceutical companies’ budgets do not go towards research and development. Rather, advertising and marketing account for 1.5 to 2x the costs of R and D. Not to mention the salaries of the CEOs. The amount of money that the drug companies spend in advertising is staggering and is in the billions of dollars PER MONTH. Their profitability has never been in question. Unfortunately, many patients consider the cost of drugs as an inelastic demand and the marketplace will probably never allow for the cost to come down–the insurance companies and the drug companies have ties that are too strong. If you have time, read the article; it is very eye-opening.

Read entire article here

Medication management in Primary and Secondary Schools – (04-16-01)

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Medication management in Primary and Secondary Schools

Excuse me for being mildly distressed at this article. We have a situation where a “widespread use” of prescription drugs is present in our school systems. Do we worry about why all these children are medicated? No. We worry about how to adequately and safely deliver the drugs to the children in a school setting. I cannot begin to describe how disturbing this trend is. Instead of trying to manage the problem, we need to figure out WHY these kids are on these drugs and how to FIX the problem.

J Am Pharm Assoc 41(1):67-77, 2001 Pharmacists and school nurses must cross professional borders if they wish to play a role in solving this important drug therapy problem. Pharmacists can provide therapeutic and contextual perspectives on the problem, while school nurses can implement solutions within the schools.

FDA Officials, Warner-Lambert Knew of Rezulin Risks – (04-16-01)

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FDA Officials, Warner-Lambert Knew of Rezulin Risks

Once again, I don’t mean to sound like I’m constantly bashing the use of pharmaceutical drugs. I want to stress the idea that, now more than ever, the situation is “buyer beware.” Unfortunately, this is very difficult to do without a full background in physiology, pharmacology and access to all the research. My thoughts on this are, since very few people are actually in a position to make such an informed decision, the best route is to avoid being the guinea pig for new meds and using most meds only after safer, more natural methods have failed.

(article) Warner-Lambert downplayed the potentially fatal risks associated with Rezulin during the approval process and received help from federal drug regulators in pushing the drug toward marketing approval, according to an article published in Sunday’s edition of the Los Angeles Times. The Times obtained company and government documents, as well as e-mail communications, which showed that Warner-Lambert officials had collaborated closely with certain senior officials within the US Food and Drug Administration during the approval process and later, when the company was being pressured to take the drug off the market. Rezulin (troglitazone) was initially approved by the FDA in January 1997 for treatment of type 2 diabetes. The drug was pulled from the market in March 2000 due to the number of reports of liver failure associated with use of the drug. At an FDA advisory committee meeting last year, regulators reported that there were 90 cases of liver failure among patients taking the drug since its launch.

The cost to global health of drug company profits – (05-17-01)

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The cost to global health of drug company profits

I’m really not in a pharmaceutical-bashing mood, it’s just that sometimes they’re such an easy target… Would it make you feel better taking those drugs if you knew that the guniea pigs for the trials came from poor countries and not from our own?

wjm — MacDonald and Yamey 174 (5): 302

Read entire article here

Inhibition of amyloid aggregation by Ginkgo biloba extract – (09-26-02)

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Inhibition of amyloid aggregation by Ginkgo biloba extract

Once again we have a beautiful example of how natural medicine, clinical applications and research work. Most of the clinicians are debating whether ginko is effective for maintaining healthy brain function and terrified to use it, while the researchers have moved beyond the “if” and moved into the “how.”

PNAS — Abstracts: Luo et al. 99 (19): 12197 –

Read entire article here

Time-release analgesic drug causes fatal overdoses in United States – (08-13-01)

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Time-release analgesic drug causes fatal overdoses in United States

So there’s another drug on the market killing people. That’s not news. But read the tactics that the pharmaceutical company used to market to physicians. 7,000 around the country including paying for hotel and travel expenses for attendees to pain management seminars. This should be illegal but would interfere with freedom of speech. In a perfect world these tactics should be fruitless, allowing sound, unbiased research to guide clinical decision making… wjm — 175 (2): 82

Read entire article here

Rates of Spontaneous Reporting of Adverse Drug Reactions in France – (10-03-02)

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Rates of Spontaneous Reporting of Adverse Drug Reactions in France

Lets follow the path here. The FDA can be paid to push a drug through before it has been properly studied. Within 7 years, about 20% of these drugs are then given black box warnings or removed from the market AFTER their release. And these warnings rely on input from the clinicians in the field using the drugs. Sound a little hairy so far? Well, it only gets better…this study finds that, despite greater than 100,000 (in France alone) adverse drug responses, less than 5% were actually reported. And chiropractic’s detractors try to say chiropractic is dangerous?????

Read entire article here

Wag the Dog, Healthcare Style

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It’s not jaw dropping news hear that industry has an undo influence on medicine today.  The routes by which industry infiltrates medicine, however, is just short of legendary.

I have always wondered how we got to where we are in medicine.  Doctors are there to help their patients get better and stay better, right?  But at what point did industry (and when I say industry, I am generally referring to the pharmaceutical companies and device manufacturers like artificial hips, pacemakers and stents for cardiac procedures) start to influence the relationship between the doctor and patient?

Make no mistake.  These companies are very successful at what they do and they do it because it works.  Every single one of us can be influenced by gifts and wooing, so don’t hold your doctor to blame.

But when the medical profession is no longer questioning the validity of the research and recommendations coming from industry, we’ve got a problem.  How can a class of drugs like the statins, that lower the absolute risk of a heart attack by 1%, rise to be the most successful class of drugs ever developed?  Why are beta blockers still being used for high blood pressure despite a decade of information that this class increases the risk of stroke and diabetes?  The list is quite long.

Maybe it’s become so pervasive that medicine can no longer tell the difference.  In which case, we are lost.

In this particular study, researchers evaluated different aspects of potential influence:

  1. Evidence base production–producing their own clinical trials that support the product.
  2. Evidence synthesis–compiling data that they produce into compelling packets.
  3. Understanding of safety and harms issues–the downplaying of risks, like what we saw with Merck and Vioxx.
  4. Cost-effectiveness evaluation–manipulation of data to make it look like the product is worth the cost.
  5. Clinical practice guidelines formation–guidelines produced by the national organizations (like the American HeartAssociation) are created by members who have financial ties to industry.
  6. Healthcare professional education–infiltration of the medical schools and sponsoring of continuing education lectures.
  7. Healthcare practice–drugs reps guiding doctors’ behaviors through direct contact. Healthcare consumer’s decisions–direct to you advertising, increasing the likelihood that (a) you’ll think you have something wrong with you like “shift work disorder” and (b) you ask your doctor to prescribed THAT medication.

Researchers were able to find that industry plays a significant role in ALL of these aspects of healthcare.  Pretty much every aspects of what we consider “health care” is played out and driven by industry.

Sure, in some cases there is an actual desire to help the patient on the side of industry, but this is far overshadowed by the desire to earn a profit.  And you and your doctor are at the end of the chain that has been manipulated long before it ever got to you.

Think about THAT the next time your doctor wants you to try that “free” sample.