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BIG PHARMA'S PAIN-FOR-PROFIT
INDUSTRY BOOMING DESPITE VIOXX VERDICT
News of a comprehensive medical industry
marketing report called the U.S. Market for Pain Management Drugs and Devices
was circulated on the internet this week coincidentally just prior to the
verdict in the first of the over 4,200 lawsuits against the makers of Vioxx,
the popular but deadly pain killer. Yes, not withstanding the Vioxx debacle,
the pain-for-profit industry is determined to march forward regardless. This pain industry market report, sold
to industry investors for a hefty $4,313, quotes economic experts who
estimate that pain costs the nation more than $70 billion annually in missed
days at work, visits to hospital emergency departments, medications and the
use of other medical and healthcare services. This report also claims that 30
to 50 million Americans suffer from chronic pain, which, it alleges,
represents 80% of all physician visits and that there are another 25 million
people who experience acute pain. The U.S. pain management industry is
expected to surpass the $25 billion mark this year and is described as an
exploding market that promises swift returns for manufacturers and investors
who jump on the bandwagon to sell a growing array of “miracle” drugs, as well
as fancy gizmos and devices promising a life without pain thanks to the magic
of modern medical science. Of course they don’t tell you that none
of the long list of drugs and devices listed as pain management money-makers,
actually address the root causes of most people’s pain. They are designed to
only ameliorate symptoms. Nor do they tell you that most of the drugs for
pain have serious side effects including death. While some of these drugs and devices
can be wonderful pain killers for people suffering from pain due to serious
accidents, broken bones and some specific maladies, in real life, weight
gain, inactivity, lack of exercise, and accumulated toxins and poisons from
vaccines, medications, dental amalgams, and what you are eating, drinking,
smoking, and breathing are the main causes. Inflammation is part and parcel
of dealing with pain because your body reacts with an inflammatory response –
heat, swelling, and pain - when it encounters anything “irritating”. Pain and inflammation can start when you
are about 15 pounds overweight. That extra pressure on your hips, knees and
ankles can result in swelling and a tiny bit of fluid pressing on a joint,
which can cause pain and starts the whole vicious cycle. If you have pain you
don’t move around or exercise and then your joints get stiff. Off you go to
your doctor who may not even weigh you but offers you some medicine for your
“arthritis”. You are also told that when your joint is in real bad shape you
will be scheduled for a joint replacement. It’s as simple as that, yet nobody
tells you that with some discipline on your part, you can get rid of the
pain. Ever since aspirin came on the scene at
the turn of the 20th Century, modern medicine has been awash with all kinds
of pain killing agents and devices which make it possible for people to
ignore the warning signals from their bodies that something is wrong. I
learned acupuncture in an elective program I created in second year medicine
because I knew there were no safe treatments for pain. Elissa started using
the services of chiropractors when the mercury toxicity from her dental
amalgams overwhelmed her system thus throwing her body out of subtle
alignment from the inflammation. At that time, the last thing she needed was
more chemicals in her body to further complicate matters. If we don’t take our body’s pain message
to heart, we gobble quick-fix drugs to silence the signal at the same time
putting more and more burden on our bodies, which creates a vicious cycle of
even more inflammation and more pain and, unfortunately, for many users of
these drugs, a catastrophic stroke, heart attack, or death. No more vivid an example of ignoring the
message are the hundreds of thousands of people who took Vioxx thanks to the
advice of their MDs. Studies now show that as many as 55,000 may have died
using this drug –tens of thousands more have to live with Vioxx-damaged
hearts, or live ruined lives suffering from damage caused by strokes such as
paralysis, blindness, epileptic seizures and the like. Vioxx was developed as a COX-2
selective, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID). In short, it was
developed to bring down the swelling associated with pain. It was intended
for people with pain and inflammation from osteoarthritis, rheumatoid
arthritis, management of short-term pain, treatment of menstrual pain, and
treatment of migraine headaches. Most people and many doctors don’t
really have a clue what drugs do to your body. To some, the drug magically
rushes to the pain spots to quell the crisis. Few people ever consider that
the rest of your body is assaulted by toxic chemicals that create havoc
everywhere else. Your liver tries to make the drug chemicals less toxic and tries
to eliminate them but in some cases the liver ends up transforming these
chemicals into even more toxic metabolites that further disrupt your health.
Your immune system comes into play, also, by attacking the drug thus creating
even more inflammation. When that happens, not knowing what is actually going
on, most doctors would just tell you to double the dose. At the time Vioxx was being developed,
two other similar drugs, Celebrex and Bextra, were also in the pipeline and
they were both touted by their backers to be the next great advance in pain
medications. In this climate of competition, Vioxx’s manufacturer, Merck,
dismissed the importance of a 1997 e-mail from one of its researchers who
opened the Pandora’s box of the drug’s cardiovascular side effects two years
before the drug was actually launched. At the time, Merck’s marketing honchos
were intent on beating Celebrex to the market. Vioxx was launched in 1999 with great
fanfare in 80 countries around the world and a hefty advertising budget to
match. But within a year, there were already obvious signs that there was
something very wrong. Sidney Wolfe, MD, head of the Nader-created Public
Citizen’s Health Research Group, tried to alert the public that in a
published study in November of 2000, Vioxx caused a four-to-five fold
increase in heart attacks and there were also increases in incidents of blood
clotting as well as other adverse reactions such as strokes and hypertension.
By September of 2001, all that the FDA was willing to do was to send a
warning letter to Merck advising the company to list heart attacks as a
warning in the Vioxx package inserts. During that same year, Merck’s PR
propaganda machine hired famous figure skater Dorothy Hamill to launch a
direct-to-customer marketing campaign to encourage patients to talk with
their physicians about taking the pill Dorothy was promoting. That year,
sales of Vioxx reached $2.6 billion, an 18% increase over 2000 –in spite of
the growing concern about the drug. Around that same time, other studies of
COX-2 inhibitor drugs indicated all three of the drugs were having problems
and in 2001 Wolfe and his group advised readers of its monthly newsletter,
Worst Pills, Best Pills News, not to take any of the COX-2 inhibitor drugs. As the Vioxx scandal played out in the
media during 2004 and 2005, it became known that Dr. David J. Graham,
associate director of science in the The next chapter in the Vioxx scandal
was the vote by members of an FDA panel to put Vioxx and Celebrex (also off
the market) back on the market but protect the public with “Black Box”
warning labels. “Black Box” warnings are the strongest means of warning
doctors and patients of the dangers of a drug available on the market. It also
gets them off the hook because they can fall back on the black box to deny
any liability. The same panel decided that Bextra was allowed to stay on the
market. Then, the New York Times broke the story
that ten of the members of the 32-member FDA panel were consultants to the
makers of one or more of the three drugs. The actual panel votes to put or keep
the drugs on the market were: Bextra 17-13 with two abstaining, Celebrex
31-1, and Vioxx 17-15. Had the 10 drug industry consultants not voted, the vote
regarding two of these drugs would have been; 12-8 to pull Bextra off the
market and 14 to 8 to keep Vioxx off the market. Interestingly, in an April 2005 FDA
action, Bextra was finally taken off the market when it was found to not only
have all the problems the other two drugs had, but it also provided
unacceptable risk to serious skin reactions. It’s as if the rug that these
bodies are being swept under finally got too small and the evidence could no
longer be hidden. At this same time, FDA officials directed manufacturers of
over-the-counter pain management drugs such as Advil and Motrin to include
label information that these drugs provided risk of cardiovascular incidents
and gastrointestinal bleeding. The first test of public opinion on the
matter came in a Texas courtroom on Friday, August 19, 2005, when a jury
found in favor of the widow of a man who died in 2001 of heart arrhythmia
(irregular heart beat) after taking Vioxx for eight months for the pain in
his hands. The victim was a produce manager of a Wal-Mart store who ran
marathons and taught aerobics classes on the side. I venture that no doctor
ever asked him if he ate a lot of potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, or
paprika—a cause of small joint arthritis—or if he had enough vitamin B3, B-6,
essential fatty acids, and magnesium. Considered one of the weakest of the
4,200 cases against Vioxx now in line to be tried, the jury felt Merck had
put profits over protecting patients. Ignoring the While it is easy to gloat over the
financial woes of Merck due to its behavior in this affair, and cry “ain’t it
awful how bad the FDA screwed up on this situation”, the real message here is
that we are the ones in charge of the decisions we make about what
medications we take regarding our health and welfare. As people committed to health freedom,
both Elissa and I are not against every modern medical product or treatment
modality on the market but we are against people who blindly follow the herd
and “do what the doctor (or any health care provider) says” without asking a
whole lot of questions, first. For that reason, we urge you to READ the
package insert of any drug you may be thinking of taking then ask yourself…
“Do I really want to take this stuff?” Package inserts are required by law
because consumer groups fought for access to information so we could have the
facts before taking the drug. While this information is usually typed in such
small print you need a magnifying glass to read it, this same information,
along with information from other sources is splattered all over the net, so
there is really no reason not to know the side effects of any drug you are
taking. FOR THE RECORD: Toxic drugs and expensive devices are not the
only pain and inflammation managers on the market. A trip through any health
food store or a quick surf over the internet will provide you with a wide
range of inexpensive strategies you can use to ameliorate symptoms. At the
same time, we urge you to seek the advice of a health care professional who
specializes in non-drug modalities such as a naturopath, a chiropractor, a
homeopath, an herbalist, a nutritional consultant, an acupuncturist and the
like who can help you get you back to enjoying radiant, pain free and drug
free health. ACT FOR HEALTH FREEDOM NOW: Go to www.friendsoffreedominternational.org
and purchase "Death by Modern
Medicine" and view and purchase the new movie on Codex and Free
Trade called "We Become Silent" by Kevin Miller. Proceeds from the
sale of these products are crucial to help fund our health freedom action. 1, The
U.S. Market for Pain Management Drugs and Devices © 2005
Carolyn Dean - All Rights Reserved Dr. Carolyn Dean is a medical doctor,
naturopathic doctor, herbalist, acupuncturist, nutritionist, as well as a
powerful health activist fighting for health freedom as president of Friends
of Freedom International. Dr. Dean is the author of over a dozen health
books, the latest of which is "Death By Modern Medicine". Elissa Meininger, is Vice President
of Friends of Freedom International and co-founder of the Health Freedom
Action Network, a grassroots citizens' political action group. She is also a
health freedom political analyst and can be heard on the natural health radio
show SuperHealth, broadcast weekly on station WKY (SuperTalk AM 930) in Website: www.deathbymodernmedicine.com E-Mail: holeopharm@pol.net |