Category Archives: Drugs

Prescription Drug Abuse – A Growing National Problem

In the May 5-11th, 2007 issue of The Lancet, Michael McCarthy tells a disturbing tale about the dramatic increase in the abuse of pharmaceutical drugs in the United States. There were 1.4 million visits to the emergency room in 2005 related to drug misuse. While illegal drug use is down, prescription and over-the-counter drug use is way up, especially among children and teens.

So why is this happening?  The pharmaceutical industry would like you to believe that it is due to the easy access people have to these drugs via internet drugstores. While this is certainly a reason why teens can get the supplies, I believe that it is in large part due to the excessive advertising of drugs on television. They make the drugs seem harmless and essential to enjoying life. This is the wrong message that is being sent to our society. I believe we need to seriously curtail pharmaceutical companies from advertising to the general public.

The site run The Partnership for a Drug-Free America is a good resource if you have a child or know an adult who may be abusing drugs.

Lybrel – Breakthrough in Contraception or a Potential Time-Bomb?

Lybrel, the new contraception pill for women from Wyeth Pharmaceuticals was just given its ok by the FDA and I have to really wonder why. This drug, will reduce or in some cases eliminate a women’s period while protecting against unwanted conception. While I, as a man, should have little to say about this issue, I will bring up a few concerns I have about this drug.

First off, what kind of long-term studies have they done on this drug and its potential for creating health issues down the road? I can pretty much guarantee that the answer is no. As with the use of HRT (hormone replacement therapy), I see the potential of opening a can of worms that will cause women who take this drug to have an increased risk of certain cancers and cardiovascular disease.

Second issue is the findings from the study which indicated that half the women enrolled in studies of Lybrel dropped out, said Dr. Daniel Shames, a deputy director in the FDA’s drugs office. Many did so because of the irregular and unscheduled bleeding and spotting that can replace scheduled menstruation. I find this somewhat disturbing when fifty percent of the people studied drop out because of unwanted on intolerable side-effects. The response by the FDA? “If you think you don’t want to go down this road, this is not for you,” Shames told reporters. Hey, if it turns out this drug had other unwanted side-effects tough luck? This is just not an acceptable stance for a government agency to take that is supposed to be protecting the public.

Others have said that Lybrel should really help women who suffer from nausea, headaches, cramping and other problems during their period. Problem with that statement is that this “benefit” wasn’t even studied!

On other main problem I have here is that this drug is seemingly trying to treat a natural process known as menstruation as if it were some sort of disease. University of New Hampshire sociologist Jean Elson had this to say “For women in that situation, I certainly can understand the benefits of taking these kinds of medications, but for most women menstruation is a normal life event — not a medical condition, why medicate away a normal life event if we’re not sure of the long-term effects?” Why indeed.

The last issue I have hear is that while this drug does seem to be effective at lowering the risk of getting pregnant, because it eliminates periods, a women who does somehow get pregnant won’t be aware of it as there will be no missed periods to tip her off. Because of the need to be health conscious during the early stages of pregnancy, like with folic acid supplementation to prevent some birth defects, this can be a dangerous problem.

Bipolar Disorders and Children – Growing Epidemic or Drug Company Bonanza?

Nothing is as painful as having a child with emotional issues. I should know, I have one. My daughter Tasya has had emotional problems ever since she started having epileptic seizures 7 years ago. She has had mood swings and temper tantrums which by themselves is not unusual (most kids go through that) but the number and severity has been a problem. Most every doctor we see wants to put her on one medication after another without regard to the potential for long term damage.

In a report coming from the British magazine, New Scientist, they question whether doctors in the United States are too quick to treat children with what they are diagnosing as bipolar disorder. Since 1996 the number of children being diagnosed with this behavioral problem went from 13 out of every 100,000 to 73 out of every 100,000 in 2004, a five-fold jump in the number of diagnoses in a scant 8 years. Children as young as 3 are being diagnosed with the disease despite the absolute ridiculousness of even attempting to diagnoses this in children that young.

The use of psychotropic drugs on young children should be viewed as a crime unless there is overwhelming evidence. The fact that we have absolutely no evidence that in the long-term, these drugs are anywhere near safe should be a red-flag. Add to that the fact that a child who was 4 years old has died when given not one, not two, but three drugs for supposedly having a bipolar disorder. The child, Rebecca Riley, was given clonidine, Depakote (anti-convulsant also known as valproic acid) and the anti-psychotic Seroquel (quetiapine fumarate). Her parents are on trial to see if they deliberately overdose her or it was an accident. My finger is pointing straight at the physicians who prescribed the drugs to this unfortunate little girl with the hopes of stabilizing her mood.

No other country is seeing this increase in the incidence of bipolar disorder despite following the same guidelines from the DSM-IV (the official psychiatric manual).  Instead of seeking natural and much, much safer means, drug companies are throwing parties for doctors who would prescribe their money making drugs for children. My daughter had enormous success and improvement in mood and seizure activity following her eliminating foods that were causing an inflammatory response (LEAP MRT Test). Amino acid therapy, nutrition and even psychotherapy should be our first line of attack on neuropsychiatric disorders and NOT harsh and life threatening drugs.

Thankfully the editors at the New Scientist call into question whether the diagnoses and treatments are real, or as I suspect, profit driven by an increasingly money hungry pharmaceutical industry.

Statins and Telomere’s – A Study Worth Listening To

As many of my readers may know by now, I am not the biggest fan of statin drugs, especially in light of the excellent book by Dr. John Abramson, Overdo$ed America . But I must admit there is some data showing benefits of taking this drug in some cases. Now, researchers may have found a key indicator which can target the drug use to the right people and not just trying it on everyone.

Published in the January 13, 2007 issue of the British medical journal The Lancet , authors Brouilette, Moore, and McMahon, et al, report that middle aged men with shorter telomere lengths benefit the most from statin treatment. Telomeres are the ends of chromosomal DNA. While not fully understood, these strands seemingly are involved in the maintenance of cellular stability. As they get shorter, your cellular biologic clock winds down and your cells begin to die.

Basically the authors propose that testing for leukocyte telomere length is advisable given the data they uncovered. I would not oppose such an idea but I’m sure the harmaceutical (spelling is intentional) industry would object because it might lower the number of users and cut back on their ridiculous profit margins.

One side note; wouldn’t it be smarter and more logical to lead a healthier life in the first place, taking adequate supplements, especially omega-3 fatty acids, b-complex nutrients and other life enriching compounds that to wait until you need artificial drugs to prop up an unhealthy body?

Fight on the Hill – Will Big Pharma Get the Tide Turned on Them

Ever since the Republican’s have had control over the House and Senate, as well as the White House, Big Pharma has received a lot of benefits, which in my opinion have been undeserved and unwarranted. The Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 was a gift to the industry to the tune of more than $8 billion dollars of additional profit according to the January 13, 2007 issue of The Lancet . Since the top ten harmaceutical companies half-year profits in 2006 were a staggering $38 billion, this seems utterly ridiculous.

This opinion piece is not meant to bash a political party. Lord knows they both deserve bashing. What I do have a gripe with is how the Republicans have unabashedly pandered themselves to Big Pharma’s deep pockets. That party received more than 2/3rd’s of the industry’s campaign contributions annually. They spent more than $800 million lobbying Congress and the rest of the Federal government agencies since 1998.

Well, you might ask, they have been creating a bunch of life saving drugs with all the research they’ve been doing, right? Poppycock I say. According to the General Accounting Office, their R & D spending went up by 147% from 1993 to 2004 but new-drug applications only went up 38% in that time frame. Not only that, but the number has been dropping since 1996. If you call Viagra, Cialis and Levitra life saving drugs, well maybe I’m wrong.

In reality, in 2007, there are relatively few new drugs in the pipeline. the industry is in legal battles because of their patent dishonesty when it came to potential side-effects of their drugs (Vioxx, Zypreza to name a few).

The Democrats have already begun the introduction of bills requiring Medicare drug price negotiation, something the Republican backed bill of 2003 forbade. Other bills such as increasing the availability of generics, importation of cheaper drugs from Canada and improved after approval monitoring of existing drugs seem to be on their way. While my faith in politicians is similar to my faith in dinosaurs suddenly appearing at my two young daughter’s elementary school, I do hope a change of climate in Washington D.C. will begin to pull back bad policy decisions made over the past 13 years.

Imagine a Cancer Drug That Kills All Cancers. Too Bad You Can’t Get It.

Imagine if you will that there is a drug that would kill almost any type of cancer, has very few side-effects and is relatively cheap. Actually, you don’t need to imagine it as it does exist and it’s called dichloroacetate or DCA. The problem is no pharmaceutical company will touch it because they can’t patent it and they can’t make ridiculous amounts of money on it. So much for compassionate corporations eh?

What DCA does is cause cancer cells to switch from using glycolysis to generate energy back to using the mitochondria for energy production. This causes the cells to revert from their immortal cancerous state where they commit suicide (apoptosis).

One problem with the drug is that it changes the way researchers need to look at cancer. Instead of being caused by a genetic mutation, they would have to change their point of way and admit that metabolism can spark cancer. My old mentor told me that the real definition of cancer is the abnormal growth and rate of growth of cells. Nothing more, nothing less. Unfortunately, cancer research is a big business and imagine the problem that would arise if we had a simple and inexpensive answer to many cancers? Lots of jobless researchers I guess.

After reading about this drug in the British journal New Scientist last week I think we need to change the name of drug companies from pharmaceuticals to harmaceuticals. The tag fits them better.

Statin Drugs, Dr. Jarvik and a Reality Check

A colleague of mine, Dr. Jeffrey Dach, wrote an eye opening article in his latest TrueMedMD newsletter about the use of Dr. Robert Jarvik as a spokesman for Lipitor. I got permission from him to reproduce his article in its entirety. If you would like to learn more about this excellent physician, go to his website at www.drdach.com

Lipitor, Jarvik and Cholesterol

Perhaps you have seen the Direct-to- Consumer TV and print advertisements with Robert Jarvik, the inventor of the Jarvik Heart, speaking on behalf of the Pfizer’s anti-cholesterol drug, Lipitor, the best selling statin drug, the best selling drug in the world, and most prescribed drug in the U.S. with 13 billion dollars in sales last year.

Jarvik is best known from the media circus surrounding the 1982 implantation of his Jarvik-7 into the Seattle dentist, Barney Clark. Although the artificial heart continued to beat in his chest, Barney died of multi-organ failure 112 days after the heart implantation operation, tethered to a dishwasher sized air compressor. The heart device acted as a blender which chewed up the blood cells. Recipients of the Jarvik-7 suffered horribly for months, finally succumbing to infections, strokes, convulsions and immune system failure.

During the ensuing media coverage, the New York Times dubbed the Jarvik Heart the “Dracula of Medical Technology”. Jarvik-7 patients had the Kevorkian option of assisted suicide, a small on-off button which allowed the mechanical heart to be stopped when too unbearable. About 90 people received the Jarvik-7 heart before it was banned.

Why would Pfizer select an MD like Jarvik as spokesman for their Direct to Consumer (DTC) campaign? Jarvik himself doesn’t have the strongest of professional credentials, he enrolled for the first two years of medical school at the University of Bologna in Italy, later returning for the MD degree at the University of Utah. Jarvik never did an internship or residency, and never actually practiced medicine. And the heart device had been invented by somebody else, Paul Winchell, the ventriloquist, who assigned his patent to the University of Utah.

Why does Jarvik’s “Dracula of Medical Technology” make him an expert on statin drugs? It really doesnt.

Eight controlled clinical trials have shown that statin drugs like Lipitor cause depletion of Coenzyme Q10, an important vitamin for cellular energy production. Heart muscle requires high levels of Co-Q10. Side effects of Co-Q10 deficiency include muscle wasting, muscle pain, heart failure, neuropathy, amnesia, and cognitive dysfunction. Muscle pain and statin-drug induced heart failure can be prevented by supplementing with Co-Enzyme Q10, found at your local health food store, an intervention considerably less expensive and less traumatic than an artificial heart operation followed by cardiac transplantation.

Perhaps Jarvik is not really the best choice for the Lipitor Ad campaign which has had mixed reviews. Instead of Jarvik, a more convincing yet unlikely spokesman would be the popular Duane Graveline MD MPH, a former NASA astronaut, and author who was started on Lipitor during an annual astronaut physical at the Johnson Space Center, and 6 weeks later had an episode of transient global amnesia, a form of sudden memory loss described in his book. Dr. Graveline points out that 50 percent of the dry weight of the cerebral cortex is made of cholesterol, an important substance for memory and cerebral function.

Graveline also points out that statins are useful for prevention of heart disease in patients who already have clogged arteries and pre-existing coronary artery disease, however this benefit is independent of how low the serum cholesterol goes in response to the statin drug.

Contrary to the findings in patients with known heart disease, no statin primary prevention study has ever shown a benefit in terms of all cause mortality in healthy men and women with only an elevated serum cholesterol, and no known coronary artery disease.

Patients with known heart disease are customarily placed on statin drugs by the medical system with no need for direct to consumer (DTC) advertising to this group. DTC ads for Lipitor are clearly directed at the larger group of untreated primary prevention patients, for which there has been no benefit in terms of all cause mortality in multiple statin drug studies.

The Japanese, J-Lit study actually showed higher mortality at the lowest serum cholesterol (both total and LDL-C), a paradox called the J-Shaped Curve. The highest mortality was found at the lowest total cholesterol of 160 mg/dl, and lowest mortality at serum cholesterol around 240 mg /ml, exactly the opposite one would expect if cholesterol lowering was beneficial for health. The authors state that the increased mortality at the lower cholesterol levels was due to increased cancer.

Another statin trial, CARE (Cholesterol And Recurrent Events), showed 1500 % increase in breast cancer among women in the statin treated group, explained as merely a statistical aberration. This is disputed by Uffe Ravnskov who feels that the difference is significant, and points to rodent studies showing statin drugs cause cancer in animals.

The Honolulu Heart Study of elderly patients showed the lowest serum cholesterol predicted the highest mortality in this patient group.

A study by Krumholz found lack of association between cholesterol and coronary heart disease mortality and morbidity in persons older than 70 years. Jenkins (BMJ) states that no statin drug study has ever shown an all cause mortality benefit for women.

The Jarvik-Lipitor Ad campaign is a perfect example of why prescription drug ads are dishonest, do not promote public health, increase unnecessary prescriptions, and can be harmful or deadly to patients. New Zealand and the US are the only two industrialized nations to allow direct-to-consumer advertising for prescription drugs. Here in the USA, thirty nine public interest groups have proposed congressional legislation to ban DTC prescription drug ads.

Two more unlikely spokesmen for the Lipitor ad campaign include Mary Enig and Uffe Ravnskov. Should either one be selected as Lipitor spokesman, I myself would run down to the corner drug store to buy up the drug. It seems unlikey that even Pfizer’s deep pockets could ever induce them to recant their opposing position on the cholesterol theory of heart disease. Mary G. Enig writes, ”hypercholesterolemia is the health issue of the 21st century. It is actually an invented disease, a problem that emerged when health professionals learned how to measure cholesterol levels in the blood.

Uffe Ravnskov MD PhD, who opposes the Lipid Hypothesis, is spokesman for Thincs, The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics, and author of “The Cholesterol Myths, Exposing the Fallacy That Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Cause Heart Disease”. His controversial ideas have angered loyal cholesterol theory supporters in Finland who demonstrated by burning his book on live television.

How many people suffer from the adverse side effects of statin drugs? Will we ever know? People experiencing adverse side effects from statin drugs may share their experiences in discussion groups . One such group has 3800 messages.

For More Information Click Here: drdach.com or click here: TrueMed.com

Quick news

Most physicians typically give people with pneumonia a seven to 10 day regime of antibiotics.  Recent research published in the British Medical Journal (June 10th) suggests that a three day treatment regimen may be just as effective.

One of the greatest mysteries in earth’s history was the mass extinction known as the Permian-Triassic extinction 251 million years ago. There has been a lot of speculation but it seems that a 300-mile crater found under the Antarctic ice may be the evidence scientists have been looking for. Five times larger than the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, this meteor was the granddaddy of them all.

According to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, June 13th, 2006, mammalian hearts may contain stem cells.  This may lead to a new generation of treatment for victims of coronary heart disease if we can get rid of the present administration in the White House whose misguided veto of federally funding stem cell research will set back research by 5-10 years.