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(NaturalNews) For years, natural health proponents have been sounding the alarm about
the dangers of new drugs being pushed on consumers. But is that a one-sided, inaccurate
view? Not at all. In fact, new research now shows the problems with Big Pharma's hugely
hyped medications are far worse than most people have even dreamed. Independent
reviewers found that about 85 percent of new drugs offer few if any new benefits -- but
they carry the risk of causing serious harm to users.
According to Donald Light, Ph.D., a professor of comparative health policy at the University of
Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey who authored the study, the pharmaceutical industry
is a "market for lemons" and Big Pharma spends a fortune to sell
those lemons to the public.
"Sometimes drug companies
hide or downplay information about serious side effects of new drugs and
overstate the drugs' benefits,"
Dr. Light, who presented his findings on August 17 in Atlanta at the 105th Annual Meeting
of the American Sociological Association, said in a press statement. "Then, they
spend two to three times more on marketing than on research to persuade doctors to
prescribe these new drugs. Doctors may
get misleading information and then misinform patients about the risks of a new
drug. It's really a two-tier market for lemons."
Dr. Light's paper, Pharmaceuticals: A Two-Tier Market for Producing 'Lemons' and
Serious Harm, is an institutional analysis of the pharmaceutical industry and how it works. He based
his conclusions on a wide range of data from independent sources and studies, including the Canadian
Patented Medicine Prices Review Board, the Food and Drug Administration, and Prescrire
International (a French language journal which publishes extensive research on
pharmacology, toxicology and pharmaceutics ). Much of research for the study was conducted
for a forthcoming book Dr. Light edited, The Risk of Prescription Drugs, which is
slated for publication this fall by Columbia University Press.
In both his paper and his book, Dr. Light emphasizes what he dubs the "Risk
Proliferation Syndrome", which refers to the way Big Pharma has grossly maximized the
number of people exposed to new drugs with relatively low effectiveness but a heightened risk of adverse and often severe side
effects. The pharmaceutical giants have accomplished this by failing to put each new medication on the market using a
controlled, limited launch which would allow evidence to be gathered about the
drug's effects, positive and negative. Instead, Big Pharma builds hugely hyped drug
launches based on clinical
trials that were designed in the first place to minimize evidence of harm and are
published in the medical literature to only emphasize a drug's advantages.
Pharmaceutical companies spend
millions of dollars on massive campaigns to sell a new prescription med, recruiting
leading doctors to use the drug for
conditions other than those for which it is approved, Dr. Light revealed. By promoting
such off-label or unapproved uses, Big Pharma goes after even more sales and physicians
inadvertently become what Dr. Light calls "double agents" -- they work to push
sales of the new drug while they are supposed to be stewards of their patients'
well-being.
And what happens when patients complain that the drug is making them sicker and/or
producing side effects? Studies show their doctors usually just discount or dismiss these
complaints, Dr. Light said.
According to the new study, the big drug companies are successful in getting away with
selling their "lemon" drugs because of three main reasons: Big Pharma is in
charge of testing their own new drugs; the pharmaceutical companies
have invested millions in building "firewalls" of legal protection to hide
information about a drug's dangers
or lack of effectiveness; and the bar for drug efficacy is set fairly low to make it
easier for Big Pharma to get a new drug approved.
Dr. Light pointed out that despite the extensive requirements for testing the efficacy and
safety of each new medication, drug companies use a strategy of "swamping the
regulator" with large numbers of incomplete, partial, and substandard clinical
trials. For instance, in one study of 111 final applications for approval, 42% lacked
adequately randomized trials, 40% had flawed testing of dosages, 39% lacked evidence of
clinical efficacy, and 49% raised concerns about serious adverse side effects.
"The result is that drugs get approved without anyone being able to know how
effective they really are or how much serious harm they will cause," he said.
"The companies control the making of scientific knowledge and then control which
findings will go to the FDA or be published."
As Mike Adams recently reported in NaturalNews, statin drugs are a
prime example of the Big Pharma push to market drugs as safe and effective while glossing
over the fact they often harm far more people than they help -- in the case of statins,
causing everything from liver damage, acute kidney failure, and extreme muscle weakness to
cataracts (http://www.naturalnews.com/028988_s...). (8.18.2010, S. L. Baker) http://www.naturalnews.com/z029506_Big_Pharma_lemons.html
For more information:
http://www.asanet.org/meetings/2010...
http://www.naturalnews.com/Big_Phar...
"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Conastitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first." Thomas Jefferson
Knowledge is the key to good health!