| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| shawnsmith |
Posted - 07/24/2008 : 07:24:11
Big Pharma Pushes Drugs That Cause Conditions They Are Supposed to Prevent
By Martha Rosenberg, AlterNet
Posted on July 24, 2008,
http://www.alternet.org/story/92430/
Like gastroesophageal reflux and bipolar disease, osteopenia began to
inflict millions when a drug to treat it was patented.
"Osteopenia, or the risk of developing osteoporosis, was concocted as
a disease at a World Health Organization osteoporosis conference in
Rome in 1992 that was sponsored by two drug companies and a drug
company foundation," writes Susan Kelleher in the Seattle Times.
Using the bone density measurements or "T scores" of a 30-year-old
woman as a standard, the new condition, osteopenia, had "boundaries so
broad they include more than half of all women over 50," writes
Kelleher. And it didn't hurt that 10,000 bone density measuring
machines appeared in doctors' offices to detect the new disease --
only 750 existed in 1995 -- many owned and financed by Merck, whose
anti-bone-thinning drug Fosamax came online in 1995.
No wonder doctor visits for thinning bones increased by 5 million from
1994 to 2003, according to the Associated Press.
Of course, selling "prevention" to at-risk patients is a pharma gold mine.
It keeps patients on meds for decades through fear, alarmist marketing
and after-this-because-of-this reasoning -- since a patient doesn't
know if she would have gotten the disease anyway.
So even when reports of Fosamax-related jaw problems called
osteonecrosis surfaced -- 1,000 cases have been documented -- and even
when a study in the Archives of Internal Medicine this year found that
Fosamax doubled women's risk of irregular heartbeat, which can cause
clots and strokes, few doubted its primary action of protecting
women's bones.
But now, like hormone replacement therapy, which also exploited
women's fear of aging and social marginalization, Fosamax appears to
cause the conditions it's supposed to prevent.
Since 2006, articles in the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal
of Orthopedic Trauma, Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, Journal of
Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism and Aging Clinical and
Experimental Research have suggested the anti-bone turnover action of
bisphosphonate drugs like Fosamax can in some cases cause fractures.
Oops.
While preventing bone loss that is caused by the process of bone
turnover or remodeling, bisphosphonate drugs can fossilize and petrify
a bone so it breaks spontaneously and with minimal trauma -- like
chalk. It will not heal properly.
Thighbones of patients on bisphosphonates have "simply snapped while
they were walking or standing," following "weeks or months of
unexplained aching," reports the New York Times.
Like other fast-tracked-to-Wall-Street drugs that are effectively
"tested" on the first users, adverse reports about bisphosphonates
came from patients and practitioners long before they came from the
FDA or manufacturers.
Bisphosphonate patients have documented excruciating pain from Fosamax
since 2001 and GlaxoSmithKline's Boniva since 2006 on askapatient.com,
many calling the drugs "poison" and saying they were forced into
wheelchairs.
But only in March did the FDA alert health care professionals to the
"severe, sometimes incapacitating, musculoskeletal pain" that
bisphosphonate drugs could cause in their patients and caution them to
consider whether musculoskeletal pain "might be caused by the drug"
rather than the bone condition.
Not only is the pain that bisphosphonate patients report "not in their
heads" -- imagine 1,257 men on askapatient.com saying their doc
dismissed their constant pain and symptomology -- it is emblematic of
what is really going on.
"There is actually bone death occurring," Dr. Phuli Cohan told Mallika
Marshall, M.D., a medical reporter for Boston's WBZ-TV News in May.
"People don't want to believe that this is happening, but it is a side
effect of the medicine," she said.
Dr. David Hunter of New England Baptist Hospital concurs that
bisphosphonates can cause "dead bone syndrome" and that patients
should have a "drug holiday to allow bone cells to rejuvenate,"
reports Marshall.
Even drug reps on the industry chat room cafepharma are skeptical
about bisphosphonates.
"They over-suppress the bone and 'may' cause subtrochanter fractures.
... It's the next hot button," wrote one anonymous poster on a thread
titled "Is Boniva dead?" sparked by a rumor that Boniva pitchwoman
Sally Fields had fallen and broken a bone.
Nor do bisphosphonates exit the body quickly when patients quit taking
them, according to a 2006 study in the Journal of the American Medical
Association -- rather, they remain for years.
(Patients "need not take costly bone-building drugs such as Fosamax
for life to reap the medicine's protective benefits," was the News &
Observer's upbeat interpretation of the drug's tenacity.)
Will bisphosphonates be the next hormone replacement therapy? Another
example of women getting the diseases they were supposed to avoid,
thanks to misogynistic marketing?
Is there a market for 10,000 used bone density measuring machines?
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| 2 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| mizlorinj |
Posted - 07/25/2008 : 11:39:18
Shawnsmith: you hit the key: this is appealing to the FEAR-BASED society. Fear starts with reading these studies, more fear before/after the doc visit, fear about side-effects, etc. Fear, fear, fear.
Also interesting that if we believe we will get the condition, we probably will. If we believe a treatment will work, it will. If we believe we'll get the side effects of the drug, we probably will. More power of the mind.
-Lori |
| myles |
Posted - 07/25/2008 : 03:04:27
Yup, get the gist of the post.
Joseph Mercola is really hot on this topic, you can see him get worked up over all these issues at mercola.com. It's a shame he's such a flagrant capitalist himself, giving the hard-sell on loads of products and services (albeit natural, healthy, organic ones). If it wasn't for his enthusiasm and geniune knowledge and logical explanations you might just think he was jealous. |
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