The Pharmaceutical Industry
 

I hope they hammer these people. This crap has to stop.

Lilly Sold Drug for Dementia Knowing It Didn’t Help, Files Show

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...d=aTLcF3zT1Pdo

Was that when Bush was on the board of directors at Lilly?

(where's that shit stirring smiley?)

hmm - not sure of the validity of this glatt, but ...

Was he really? According the article it all started in 1998. So I don't know.

Bush I was on the board of directors in the 70s, and Bush II appointed the CEO who ran the company during this time period to a position on the Homeland Security Advisory Council.

Oh crud, I was hoping there were some decongestants in this thread.

Well at least those old people weren't using untested home remedies. God knows those don't work.

very good Clod, very good.

Indeed. (non-blog-link)

Yep. Looks like a small percentage of the remedies actually work. Just like pharmaceuticals. I applaud the government for bothering to check.

Wait, I'm confused...the title says "NONE OF THESE REMEDIES WORK" but the article says that some of them do.

Which do I believe? The title can't be wrong, can it?

The slackers didn't even bother to fabricate their research results? They've got a lot to learn from Merck and Pfizer...

The thing about Lily is when they first invented their new wonder pill Zyprexa they wanted to get it out there and into the consumer as quickly as possible.
The use of this drug spread like Aspirin and the doctors were getting free samples and all the pens, notepads and clocks they could eat.
For a person with insurance the prescription was mere pennies (o.k. a couple bucks) but the actual cost of a month's worth of this garbage was well over a hundred dollars. See where this is going?
Later studies found that this pill was causing diabetes because of all the sugar cravings and sudden weight gain, and a severe dependency on the drug, even if you didn't really need it.
By that I mean, if you told a doctor in 99' that you were depressed, they'd prescribe this crap. Yes, I've seen it happen. It's disgusting.
So years pass for these patients taking this pill, they don't feel better (in fact they don't "feel" anything at all) and they want to be relieved of Zyprexa's monster grip.
Nope, you have to be weened off of it slowly or it can cause panic attacks, heart problems, mania, you know, like heroin addiction.
If you ask my opinion it should either be pulled or doctors should use a little more discretion with who they're prescribing this shit to.
That's my 2 cents.

The Emperor's New Drugs.

"Yes there is a placebo effect, but is there a powerful antidepressant drug effect?"

And now that they've checked, what will happen to the "alternative medicines" that failed the test? I'm guessing that ginger for chemo is not a significant percentage of their business.

When Lily advertises a drug for something that studies have found it has no effect on, it is a scandal, and rightly so. It should be an even bigger scandal for the "alternative medicine" industry, for whom that is the business model. Lily could have put Zyprexa in the herbal remedy aisle with a few testimonials and they wouldn't have needed to do any testing in the first place.

I tried everything for chronic panic and anxiety attacks. Exercise, breath control, herbal remedies, meditation, eating differently. All of this had no effect, placebo or otherwise. Only 15mg of Paxil solved the problem, and has now solved it for 13 years, allowing me to live a normal life.

Dude, I don't think it's working!

Sometimes the drugs do what they're intended to do.
It's when they're prescribed for things that they're not intended for that we run into problems.

ex- preparation H is not best used for a headache ;)

sometimes off-label uses are just fine though. A good example is using extra doses of birth control pills as a "morning after" pill back before the morning after pill was available.

"Do not drink alcohol with this medication."

My dad said "that's just a SUGGESTION."

:lol:

And, uh, seriously glatt? That hardly seems safe?

This sounds like an incredibly dumb idea.

Similar to my friend having "lady problems" and instead of going to the doctor she just takes whatever amount of Belladonna cause you know, "it was in a gelcap it's safe"

then her pancreas failed.

OOPS!

Actually it is an accepted use of BCP.

By whom and do you have a link?

Back when I read about it ten or fifteen years ago, it was an accepted use by doctors, but was still off label.

There's a specific formula and dosage to follow, and your doctor can tell you what it is, but it's safe.

A close friend's mom read in a ladies magazine back in the day (way back) that you could do the same thing chemically. She tragically died.

It is still used today.

It is known as Plan B and is still in wide use today.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/mor...r-pill/AN00592

Huh, occording to wikipedia, this off label use of regular birth control pills is approved by the FDA. So it's off label, but it's more than just understood by doctors to be OK, it's actually gov't approved.

"The combined or Yuzpe regimen uses large doses of both estrogen and progestin, taken as two doses at a 12-hour interval. This method is now believed to be less effective and less well-tolerated than the progestin-only method.[4] It is possible to obtain the same dosage of hormones, and therefore the same effect, by taking several regular combined oral contraceptive pills. For example, 4 Ovral pills are the same as 4 Preven pills.[5][6] The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved this off-label use of certain brands of regular combined oral contraceptive pills in 1997.[2][5][7]"

If I recall correctly, any birth control pills will work, you just have to know which pills of the month to take, so you get the ones with the proper hormone levels.

Sounds risky, but what do I know?

No and yes. No not any will work because of the different levels of hormones contained in various BCP, they run the gamet. Yes you have to have the right ones.

Not really. You just have one big assed heavy period for a few days. Then you are done.

And that's different than every month for 33 years, how? :lol:

I'm sorry, was that TMI? Feel like I'm talkin' to my girlfriends. :)

When I read about it, the instructions were always to call your doctor to get the instructions and to have the prescription for BCP written in case you didn't have any on hand.

The point being that off label uses of prescriptions can sometimes be safe and effective under the guidance of a knowledgeable doctor.

One word fix:

Hysterectomy.

Speaking of off-label uses, if you put viagra in your shoe, it will make you limp.

I don't understand why you think the alternative medicine industry is the bigger scandal. If I buy a box of medicinal tea or some quack colon cleanser it's a few of my dollars and may or may not benefit me... shouldn't really matter to anyone else. If I go to the doctor and get prescribed some daily dosage, habit forming drug that costs my insurance co $500 a month for the rest of my life, raising everyone's premiums, is only a bit more effective than a sugar pill but could have some serious side effects.... well you can guess which scenario I think would be bigger scandal...

When I put calendula on a burn, it stops hurting.

Meanwhile, at XKCD ...
Attachment 23787

Whaddya got for hypertension and high triglycerides?

Diet and exercise.

http://www.webmd.com/cholesterol-man...rides-overview

yeah. what she said. get to the gym.

So back to the BCP thing real quick.
One of the plan B pills is just levonorgestril but in a higher dose. There is a BCP called Levlen that's all one level of hormone (levonorgestril) for the three weeks, then one week of placebos.
If you're on Levlen, you could double up or something (supposedly safely) to use as a plan B type deal if necessary. Theoretically.
If you use another type of BCP you'd have to have your doctor tell you which ones because each week is a different hormone level and blah blah blah.
Then after you do this, you come up short at the end of the month on your pills and it screws up your whole cycle.
So why not just go to the pharmacy and buy plan B which you don't need a prescription for, not mess up the rest of your year's worth of pills OR, better yet, use a condom?

I suspect Plan B is used more frequently by those who are not already on the pill and because people make mistakes. If accidental pregnancy was as simple as "why not use a condom" there would be no problem.

Wait, so if they're not on the pill how would they be able to double up on their pills to use as a morning after and BOOM! my head exploded.

darn.

Two reasons: The first is that during the 80, the plan B pills were first being rolled out in various countries, and they were not as available as they are now. So BCPs were the only game in town then for many people. The second reason is that BCPs are cheaper than the plan B pills, and many people already had them on hand.

I agree with your implied point that today it's more convenient to go for the plan B pills. I think you don't even need a prescription when you go to the pharmacy window.

Because the worst practices of the medical industry, the unfortunate examples that make up the bulk of these anti-pharmaceutical news articles, are the standard practice of the alternatives. Advertising and profit are corrupting forces on the industry. But that's all there is in the alternative industry - they are the pharmaceutical industry without the clinical trials.

The fact that some clinical trials are botched is not a good reason to skip them altogether.

Well that and thousands of years of use... of trial and error. And you don't see much advertising... or profit really, when you compare to mainstream big pharma medicine.

Hey that's fine, make your choices. And mind your own business when it comes to mine ok? Because I might want to try an herbal tea before I get an expensive prescription... or I might try a dab of clove oil before I take a bunch of narcotics etc etc... Placebo effect? Ok fine, I'll take the cheapest/easiest one thanks.

edit: FYI: Botched and fabricated mean two different things.

We can never be friends.


:bawling:

Might, I said, might... I want to keep my options open.

Which can't seem to be duplicated in a double blind study. It's pure profit. They have no R&D costs, and minimal manufacturing costs. And some of them get plenty of advertising. Head-On, Airborne, and Enzyte come to mind.

What, specifically, are you talking about?

Yeah I don't know anything about these products (although I've had a medical professional who frequents this board recommend Zicam based on experience, I haven't actually tried it).
I had more herbal/traditional remedies in mind when talking about "alternative"... you know, the stuff "modern medicine" comes from... although ineffective and advertised would also describe main-stream over the counter cough medicine.

*wipes eyes*

well, okay then. I mean, you could get the narcotics and just...oh, I don't know, have them around in case someone you knew needed them or something like that.

no biggie. Just, you know, narcotics.

Anything except the few exceptions noted in the article.When an herbal remedy is tested and works, it becomes part of modern medicine. If it isn't tested, or is tested and doesn't work, it remains "alternative". If the ginger capsules hold up to further testing, they'll become as much part of modern medicine as aspirin. But all of the remedies that failed testing will remain on the herbal remedy aisle at Whole Foods.

Orly?

I disagree with you HM. I'm sure you're devastated.

If it doesn't require a prescription, what does that mean? People use it? Doctors informally recommend it?

Yes. Aspirin is an obvious example.

Okay. I use lactobacillus acidophilus as a probiotic. My doctor has recommended it. It has been tested in a variety of studies as a digestive aid. So you're on board with that, then?

According to a quick Google:Wikipedia and medicinenet also mention using it to repopulate the gut after antibiotics. NIH seems to be the source of the Mayo Clinic quote, and has a lot more data about the studies with respect to that and other uses.

I'm on board with the NIH.

And from your initial link, I would assume that you're now on board with the use of ginger to alleviate nausea, right? And of course, any proctologist in the country will tell you to use magnesium citrate to clean out your colon before an examination, and by extension it will treat constipation as well... I could continue to name them, but my point is you already use and "believe in" a huge number of "natural remedies." The only problem is you hear the phrase "natural remedies" and you assume that must mean it hasn't been tested.

What's more, untested does not equal disproven. It is all well and good to hold ourselves to a scientific ideal of broad-scale, blind testing for the effectiveness of every single remedy everyone has ever thought of. But the reality is neither the medical or the pharmaceutical companies can meet that ideal, the vast majority of the time. Economic realities taint everything.