A small Hurray! for Big Pharma.

[hedgehog]

I know this goes counter to what most people would say. Admittedly new drugs cost a lot as long as they are under patent and Big Pharma spends too much on advertising and First World vanity drugs instead of Third World lifesavers, BUT

I've also seen asthma treatments evolve from a shot gun to a precision missle in the last 20 years. You better believe that Advair is an amazing improvement over Theo-dur. Until you've had to make a choice between listening to your child struggle to breath and giving him a drug that makes his heart pound like a pile driver, you may not appreciate that difference. I was talking to a doctor today who commented on how much better the new glaucoma drugs are than what was available 10 years ago. Even with over-the-counter drugs, there are many times that ibuprofen, naproxen or acetaminophen are better for an individual than aspirin.

My pharmacist owns his shop and decorates it with authentic bottles from the old days. It's amazing how many of the old medicines were based on the same herbs many swear by even today. My question is, if herbs were all that effective, why did people flock to the newer medications?

[StarryNite]

1. They flock because

of big pharma propaganda.

[hunter]

6. Not me.

My old drugs were better than being dead, but not a whole lot better.

There is no way in hell I'd ever go back to my old drugs even though they now cost about twenty times less than what I'm taking now.

[physioex]

2. Ummmm....Cuz

Big corporations like Merck, Abbott Labs, Pfizer, Smith-Kline took over and sold us a pack of lies. And you know that prevention goes out the door and replaced with treatment since diseases like Type II diabetes, COPD, MI can be reduced by prevention.

[hedgehog]

15. Not every problem can be prevented by good habits.

On edit - a lot of the medications people take are preventive medicines. Future studies may debunk the role of chloresterol in heart disease, but until then a lot of people will take meds to control their chlorestel. My husband excercised and was very lean but still had high chloresterol levels. He got his numbers down with changes in his diet, but after a wehile they crept up again. His numbers are low now because oof medication. Given the history of heart disease in his family, I'm very happy this medication is around.

[Cleita]

3. As an asthmatic, I went back to herbal remedies when I couldn't

afford the expensive pharmaceuticals and found them to be as effective as the drugs. They just take longer to become effective so you have to wait for the benefits to kick in and sometimes it takes weeks. Also, you can stop an asthma attack with a couple of cups of strong black coffee. However, the most effective herb ephedra has been taken off the market because it was abused by people who took it excessively to get high.

[hunter]

9. I had a couple of overnighters in the hospital trying to go herbal.

Nice if it works, but I can drink coffee until I puke (and I have!) and still end up in the hospital ER turning blue.

[Cleita]

12. If you need the albuterol I'm not saying you shouldn't take it.

I understand Advair is wonderful too but I can't afford it so I have to really on alternative remedies, but I'm certainly not saying you should do herbals if you can afford the pricey stuff.

[blondeatlast]

4. I've taken insulin for 41 years. There's much wrong with the industry,

but I'm here because of it. Until very recently, there were no medical treatments for insulin-dependent diabetes.

I wish BP were more ethical, but damn, it's GREEEEAT to be alive...

[Cleita]

7. Oh, they deliver all right, but it's time to take the corruption

out of the system. It used to be that PHARMA only advertised in medical journals for doctors to see. I think that stopping the advertising to the general public would be a step in the right direction. It would force them to be stricter about their testing. I think that they have become careless because they are looking at profit before putting out a safe product.

[blondeatlast]

11. With that, I absolutely agree. Public advertising is a sham on so many levels,

not the least is the fact that now BP improves existing drugs to extend their patents instead of pouring those funds into research for deadly, debilitating stuff.

It's so much more important to be able to take Viagra just once a day than to spare some kid a kidney transplant... :eyes:

[NNadir]

5. While fully crediting what you say, I should note that there are few drugs

quite as important and as effective as aspirin.

If aspirin had a patent and marketing - if it was not a cheap commodity - it would be a multibillion dollar blockbuster, mostly because people would promote it.

[Cleita]

8. Not only that. Isn't the Willow bark that it's derived from just

as effective?

[Habibi]

10. Can't speak to that personally

as I don't even take aspirin any more. But we'd give our puppy a willow branch to chew when she was teething; it seemed to help. Or maybe we imagined it. :-)

[Cleita]

13. No Willow bark carries the enzyme or amino acid (don't know

which..am not a chemist) that is the active ingredient in aspirin. I think you brew it into a tea. I've never done it myself because aspirin is cheap and available.

[hedgehog]

14. Cheap, available and consistent

Digitalis is also derived from a plant, but I'd rather take a pill than rely on someone to brew foxglove tea!

[Cleita]

20. Yes, poisonous plants certainly can't be taken hit and miss.n/t

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

16. Good god, no.

Aspirin contains salicylic acid, which relieves pain, but causes horrible ulcers.

That's why the good chemists behind Bayer acetylated it, so it passes through the stomach without causing the horrible erosion, into the intestines where it's deacetylated, and then does its thing.

Plus, you can make it from petroleum which saves the bark of millions of willow trees.

[hedgehog]

18. Some people can literally stomach ibuprofen but not aspirin,

or naproxin but not ibuprofen. I saw my father-in-law look and act 15 years younger whne he found an NSAID he could tolerate that took care of his pain.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

19. Yes, they're all different compounds.

You don't have to worry about Rhys' syndrome with children taking ibuprofen. However, you have to worry about overdosing and liver damage. Not so much when it comes to naproxen, however, a lot of people are allergic to naproxen, and so on.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

17. Big pharma does a pretty good job in other countries.

The ones which have nationalized health care, and their governments by drugs from pharma in bulk. So if you're poor you don't have to worry about not dying for lack of medicine. Probably a part of the reason why they have a longer life span.

[Cleita]

22. That's because they have stricter regulations in those countries

and can bargain for bulk. Also, big PHARMA seems to think that in order to get paid for their research, we the American people should pay for it.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

23. big pharma's a business.

If you want new drugs, you're going to have to pay for it.

You could pay pharma, you could pay taxes.

[Cleita]

26. For something that involves life and death I would rather pay taxes.

I would want research done in the finest university medical centers and the actual drugs manufactured by a contractor that bids for the job against other manufactures that the government pays. The drugs should be free to those who need them.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

27. Well then by all means.

Support the politicians that support the taxes that replace the hundreds of billions of dollars that big pharma's currently paying for research.

[Cleita]

32. I don't have it in front of me right now and I don't have time to

dig through the articles, but there is information in the archives of the Physicians for a National Health Plan http://www.pnhp.org that says otherwise if you are interested in researching it yourself. A lot of research isn't done by PHARMA, but they do most of the testing. It seems to me that testing isn't being done as expensively or stringently as it was in the past. Those people who are dying from side effects of medication they are taking leads me to believe that. So IMHO the "research" money is being used to enhance the bottom line and the patients are the unknowing test subjects or Guinea pigs. I hope one of these days there is an investigation to find out exactly where the money is coming from and going to.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

33. Horseshit.

Drug companies spend an average of two billion dollars for every new drug that comes to mark it.

That's everything from developing a lead, to synthesis, to scaling up production, to fully informed consensual drug trials.

You're edging over into kooky conspiracy theory stuff.

[hedgehog]

34. I think you both a partially right.

Almost every organization has its share of assholes who seem to be dedicated to subverting the very mission of the institution. Thus, schools have teachers who hate kids, stores have clerks who can't stand the customers, construction firms have designers who don't believe in gravity and pharmaceutical companies have managers more untested in a bonus than in helping people. Some pharmaceutical companies are better at keeping these people on a leash than others.

[Cleita]

35. Whatever. The conspirators though are some pretty well

known journalists like Bill Moyers. Before you shout horseshit you really need to read the articles on the website, which incidentally comes out of Harvard Medical School.

[MonkeyFunk]

21. Yup

my mom has had horrible asthma her whole life. I can't count how many times she was hospitalized when I was a kid, and every time, she could've died.

For the last few years, she's virtually asthma-free, now that she has the newer meds.

My Dad had polio as a kid. Thank god that scourge is mostly gone now.

People who want to hate modern medicine should all be forced to live together without its benefits.

[Cleita]

24. I don't hate it. I want it regulated better and reigned in.

Also, you may be surprised to find out some of the miracle cures of the last century were not developed by big PHARMA. They bought the patents after the fact. I believe the salk vaccine was one of those. I must go Google.

[MonkeyFunk]

25. I have no problem with better regulation

we should always strive to improve it. The same is true for food and supplements.

Many here, though, are total luddites when it comes to medicine, and those people should forego all its benefits and leave the rest of us alone.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

28. Salk died a very rich man.

He's a famous, rare example of somebody who didn't get a patent. But he hardly needed the money.

[hedgehog]

30. I'd rather see a man like Salk be well paid than some of the

entertainers that are around these days!

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

31. That's the whole purpose of patents.

There's no incentive for spending a huge amount of capital on something, if somebody's going to rip your invention off, and make all the money you would have made.

[hedgehog]

29. If I understand correctly, a lot of the problems with vaccines start

when a vaccine developed in small well controlled batches is manufactured in large batches to save money. If every virus in the brew has to be held at X degrees for Y hours, you can see how some of the viruses might get overcooked or undercooked in a large batch. that's how you get some doses that are ineffective and some that can actually cause the disease they're meant to prevent.

The problem is lack of proper regulation and inspection.