Pharmaceutical Ethics

[koan]

Do you believe that some pharmaceuticals are more dangerous than they acknowledge?

I believe that birth control pills, for example, completely mess up a woman's body. I *know* that Depo-Provera does horrendous things. How often do you think they conceal information to make money from the product?

[RedGlitter]

Koan, it's a given here that they don't tell you everything up front. Half the stuff we take is as dangerous as what we're taking it for but if the pharms let on, money would not be made. Money still talks.

(*They* being doctors, big pharma and small pharma. For them to make $$ they have to keep you "just a little bit sick")

[koan]

It's a story from June 2006 but the kind of story that amazes me when it falls from public scrutiny. We follow murder trials breathlessly but when it is the entire consumer world at risk it comes across as less important.

The Guardian story

Drug companies are accused today of endangering public health through widescale marketing malpractices, ranging from covertly attempting to persuade consumers that they are ill to bribing doctors and misrepresenting the results of safety and efficacy tests on their products.

In a report that charts the scale of illicit practices by drug companies in the UK and across Europe, Consumers International - the world federation of consumer organisations - says people are not being given facts about the medicines they take because the companies hide the marketing tactics on which they spend billions.

...

The British company AstraZeneca, for instance, has been criticised by regulatory bodies: it allegedly organised an event to promote its drug Crestor which included tickets for a musical, and provided flights and hotels for doctors to attend a conference on bipolar disorder on the French Riviera. AstraZeneca says all employees must now pass an exam on its code of conduct.

GlaxoSmithKline, Britain's largest drug manufacturer, is under investigation by German and Italian authorities for alleged corruption of doctors - at least 1,600 in Germany and more than 4,000 in Italy, where the illegal gifts were said to amount to €228m (£156m) from 1999 to 2002. GSK says it has since established marketing codes. New staff have to pass a test on the code of practice. The report points out that in 2004, 87 employees were dismissed or agreed to leave the company voluntarily as a result of breaches of the codes, and that sanctions such as written warnings were imposed in 109 cases.

[gmc]

Originally Posted by koan

Do you believe that some pharmaceuticals are more dangerous than they acknowledge?

I believe that birth control pills, for example, completely mess up a woman's body. I *know* that Depo-Provera does horrendous things. How often do you think they conceal information to make money from the product?

Actually one of the reactions to some of the makes of birth control pill is full blown depression. I reckon it must be the cause for a lot of marriage breakdown as it effectively;y is a change in personality and yet it is not common knowledge.

Blame the doctors they are supposed to know all the side effects before they prescribe. I knew a research pharmacologist who was regularly called in as a consultant-he was seeing patients prescribed one drug that had side effects that the same doctor prescribed another drug to treat that also had side effects that he prescribed a drug to treat-patients on cocktails of drugs all interacting with each other he was often called in to try and work out the mess.

The pharmaceutical industry may be at fault but it is the doctors who decide what to give their patients.

[koan]

It's only logical that a number of them just barely passed their exams.

[RedGlitter]

It's not so common knowledge that pharmacists know more about the drugs they fill than the doctors do the ones that they prescribe. Their job is to beef up on all the latest stuff, doctors have no time for that.
I have been stopped several times by pharamicists who have seen problems with drugs I was combining. I have also gone to the doctor with side effects from their drugs that they were unaware existed.
I partly blame the public as well, for sucking down any Rx they're given without questoning or looking into it themselves. But mostly I blame the drug manufacturers for putting shoddy product on the market. That's how I got diabetes, from taking a drug known by all (except me) to cause it.

[minks]

I am of the belief "the industry" creats an ailment so they can rape you of your money so you can be releived of said ailment (or so you are lead to believe) ... ie PMS!

Relief = $
Cure = 0

why have a cure when you can make sooo much money out of managing an illness..

.I once had a chemist refuse to give me a medication because I was the wrong age group for the drug . He promptly got on the phone to the doctor and gave him one hell of a serve. He was not a happy man and siad If I had taken it i would have been hospitalized within a week ....Now that's scary

[minks]

[quote=magenta flame;581197]why have a cure when you can make sooo much money out of managing an illness..

isn't that the sad truth.

YUP!

I honestly believe that they could cure all those childhood illneses but they wont.
they cured polio and I reckon they are kicking themselves ANd it wouldn't surprise me with all the research they have put into it that there is a cure for AIDS just sitting there somewhere?