Today’s society has instilled in us a sense that if there is something wrong with us, there is a drug to cure it. With people abusing fossil fuels, not thinking of the effects it can have on their lungs; indulging in unhealthy food, not realizing that their next heart beat could be their last, the fragile human body can only handle so much on it’s own before it turns somewhere else for help. With several medical advances, deficiencies have been found all over the human body and with such deficiencies usually comes a solution which can now be found in a multi-coloured tablet that fits in the palm of your hand.
High cholesterol, infections, and diabetes are several problems that have plagued the common person, though we are lucky enough to be able to control it and in some cases, dissolve it with the help of various drugs. There is only one problem: with the thousands of drugs on the market, you must ask yourself - or better yet, your physician - which one truly is the safest and most useful for you and your condition. But more importantly, will that be the one that your doctor prescribes for you?
Pharmaceutical companies all over the United States want their drugs to be the ones in the highest demand all over the country. Regardless of the fact that the pharmaceutical companies spend over 50 million dollars to fully develop a product, it automatically isn’t given the green light for public use. There are two major hurdles for pharmaceutical companies to jump before they start digging themselves out of their 50 million dollar deficit. First, they must have their drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), or similar health body in countries other than the United States. If this is completed successfully, the drug is then opened up for public use, though it is not guaranteed that the public will use it. This is why physicians and the prescriptions they prescribe play such a crucial role in the success of a new drug. This is the second hurdle. Let’s begin with the approval process.
The approval process used by the FDA can vary greatly depending on the type of drug or medical device which is seeking approval. Despite the thousands of different drugs that are lined up to be approved, there are certain standards that every drug must meet. If the FDA were to approve a drug, the public trusts that that drug is safe and effective. In order to ensure the safety of the thousands of Americans who might take this pill, the FDA reviews the results of several tests done involving the drug, ranging from animal and human medical testing to simple laboratory tests. The FDA knows that each drug has its benefits as well as its drawbacks and it is the FDA’s duty to determine whether the drug should be released to the public, believing that its benefits are worth the side effects inflicted upon the drug user. Finally after reviewing all aspects of the drug and determining that it is safe, it is ready to be used by the problem prone American public, who are desperately seeking it as a solution. However in a business world where deceit is witnessed too often, one can only wonder if the solution is nothing but a larger problem.
After spending mass amounts of money on a product, pharmaceutical companies are going to go to great lengths to support their drugs regardless of what they have to do to make them successful. If it means replacing dead or deformed rats with live and healthy ones, so be it. When such a drug is desperately trying to make its way into the waiting mouths of the American public, pharmaceutical companies become subjective to selective listening, hearing only what they want to hear from the doctors who have been given their drug to test on patients. These ‘results’ are the ones relayed to the FDA whereas the others somehow lose their way. Therefore, regardless of the positive results that the FDA reviews, if the pharmaceutical company manages to find a dark enough blindfold, the reality is that harmful drugs have the potential to be released to the public through prescriptions made by the essential middleman, your family physician.
Now that the first hurdle has been jumped, it is time to hop over the second one. Doctors are responsible for prescribing drugs to their patients; they tell their patients which drugs they should purchase. The pharmaceutical companies, obviously involved in a great deal of competition as any business would be, now have to prove to the physician that it is their drug that is the best to prescribe. There are several ways to go about proving that a drug is the best one on the market, though some pharmaceutical companies take a peculiar approach.
On a particular evening, pharmaceutical companies will invite a select list of doctors to inform them of a new drug that they are planning to introduce to the public.This evening is not any old information session. With weekend seminars being all expenses paid, all doctors have to do is sit back and enjoy the perks of being a doctor and if they want, listen to what the pharmacists have to say about the drugs. On an evening in New York city at a seminar hosted by Pfizer Inc., Dr. Rudy Mueller was offered up to $10,000 worth in free trips, tickets to sports events, days at the spa, and dinner cruises. Some may call it effective marketing - pharmaceutical companies see it as a way to ‘educate’ doctors - but many call it bribery. After such gifts are given to physicians, it is impossible for the doctor to return to work without having his judgment somewhat biased the next time his patient is in need of a prescription. People might be prescribed something that is totally unnecessary, or that is not the 'best prescription' because of the relationship between the physician and the pharmaceutical company.
There is definitely something wrong with this scenario. When people blind themselves from the truth in order to add a few more zeros to their bank account and in exchange risk the lives of millions of Americans who are placing their trust in them, it is clear that we as moral and ethical beings, are at an all-time low. Physicians are oblivious to any testing done by the pharmaceutical companies. All they know is that the drug has been approved by the FDA, and must be safe.
This is of course incorrect, for the FDA, despite its best efforts, unfortunately can not detect all defects within the drug before it is open for public use. For example, Smith Kline was fined 100,000 dollars in 1984 because they were caught covering up disastrous results involving reactions to their drug, Selacryn. This drug was associated with 36 deaths in the United States.
In the year 2000, a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association stated that medical errors are one of the leading causes of death in the United States, with 225,000 deaths per year. 106,000 of those deaths were attributed to adverse reactions from medication. Physicians must realize that they hold in their hands the lives of millions of Americans. If this is going to stop, it has to begin with the doctors.
Let’s just hope that the next time a patient is in need of a prescription, the absolute best is prescribed because if not, for all we know, it could be their last.
Today’s society has instilled in us a sense that if there is something wrong with us, there is a drug to cure it. With people abusing fossil fuels, not thinking of the effects it can have on their lungs; indulging in unhealthy food, not realizing that their next heart beat could be their last, the fragile human body can only handle so much on it’s own before it turns somewhere else for help. With several medical advances, deficiencies have been found all over the human body and with such deficiencies usually comes a solution which can now be found in a multi-coloured tablet that fits in the palm of your hand.