StarNewsOnline.com: The Voice of Southeastern North Carolina
"...The number of prescriptions has swelled by two-thirds over the past decade to 3.5 billion yearly, according to IMS Health, a pharmaceutical consulting company. Americans devour even more nonprescription drugs, polling suggests....
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Well over 125,000 Americans die from drug reactions and mistakes each year, according to Associated Press projections from landmark medical studies of the 1990s. That could make pharmaceuticals the fourth-leading national cause of death after heart disease, cancer and stroke....
..."What the drug companies are doing now is promoting drugs for long-term use to essentially healthy people. Why? Because it's the biggest market."
In fact, relatively few pharmaceutical newcomers greatly improve the health of patients over older drugs or advance the march of medicine. Last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration classified about three-quarters of newly approved drugs as similar to existing ones.
Confronted with mounting costs, drug makers churn out and promote uninspired sequels like Hollywood: drugs with the same ingredients in a different form for a different disease...."
Yes, medicine is good and we should be happy about all the new drugs that can save people, but when you look at the big picture, we have a problem. Capitalism and medicine are in conflict. What is best for the drug makers' bottom line does not mesh with what is best for Americans' health. How can we overcome this? I'm asking is all....