The
Pharma/AMA/FDA Rant by Rich Amber
Who is responsible for your health and the health of your children?
Or your elderly parents, if you are the one taking care of them? Is that your doctor’s
responsibility, or do you accept that your life is your own responsibility? If you accept that you have a responsibility for your own life or
that of your child, then you also have an obligation to study and learn, rather than
merely accepting the word of some guy wearing a white smock without question. You need to
become active, know what the adverse drug reactions are, know the dangerous combinations
and/or research the medication that you, your children, or your elderly parents are
taking. If you or your family members are on a prescription medication, you should own a
PDR (Physicians Desk Reference).*1 * Note 1: All PDRs are out of date by the time they are published.
That’s because the drugs are coming out faster than these books can be written.
Buying this book, however, is the best hope you have for being able to find out all the
side-effects of a drug and what that drug is supposed to help you with. So, do you believe your doctor has only your best interests in mind
when he prescribes a drug to cure your disease (should read: cover up your symptoms)? Do
you believe the pharmaceutical corporations have your best interest in mind when they
develop a new drug? Do you think the federal agency known as the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) has your best interests in mind when they approve a drug for use in
the United States? Really? Of course, we all know the federal government would never do
anything detrimental to the health and welfare of any of its citizens, don’t we? They
are perfectly honest, above board, and always think of us first, right? “…physicians have pretty much been pharmaceutically trained and
were disease-oriented. So physicians find their comfort in writing prescriptions. They
understand their drugs, at least most of them do, and that’s what they are trained to
do. We are looking for disease and the treatments that we know we can prescribe.”
– Dr. Ray Strand, author of Death by Prescription Now, a few issues back, we talked briefly about the number of
diseases in the 1950s and 1960s as opposed to the number of diseases we have today. The
gist of that being that most of what they call diseases today really are nothing more than
symptoms of some other disease, but the pharmaceutical corporations had to get a doctor to
call it a disease in order that they could patent the medicine and market it. Note also
that in 1960, we had something like only 800 drugs on the market. Today, we’ve got
almost 10,000. Does that give you a clue why we supposedly have so many new diseases? The 1992 Prescription Drug User Fee Act enabled drug companies to pay
“user fees” to the FDA. Now, of course, the law says it “requires pharmaceutical companies to pay a user fee in
order that the FDA can review that drug.” This
“user fee” was $250,000 per new drug application. That fee has grown so much by
now that the pharmaceutical industry is actually contributing over half of the FDA’s
budget. “User fee”? It sounds to me a whole lot more like a bribe. Here’s
the bucks, so approve my product. Instead of the FDA being an isolated regulatory group that truly
scrutinizes all of these drugs, they have actually formed a partnership with the
pharmaceutical industry. The pressure on the FDA is now not, “if this drug
should be approved” but the attitude is, “how can we get this drug approved
quickly?” Most of those “fees” go toward speeding up the approval process
(i.e., hiring new staff to review applications, etc.). “Over half of the FDA staff members involved in approving
drugs are now paid by the pharmaceutical industry.” – The Truth About the
Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It, M. Angell, published by
Random House, NY, 2004 Interesting. And you trust that these
people are unbiased and working for your best interests? The pharmaceutical industry, being a very powerful, very wealthy
industry, is really flexing its muscles in all of these avenues, such as alternative
health and integrated medicine. They also tell the doctors which drug should be prescribed
for which “disease” and this is best done at the point where all doctors take
their directions, from the AMA’s published Standards of Care. That’s made up of
a group of people, who are not doctors, who decide how doctors are to treat their
patients. And, get this, 88%
of the people on that board who decide the “Standard of Care” for any given
disease are on the payroll of the pharmaceutical
companies. I can just about guarantee that you won’t hear the truth about
any disease from the federal government. Both the USDA and FDA have become, over the
last two decades, nothing more than promoters of the very industries they are supposed to
be regulating. Time and time again, the regulatory decisions of these two agencies
favor corporations, not the public, and the FDA, in particular, works tirelessly to
protect the profits of drug companies, regardless of the health implications for Joe
Public (as we’ve recently seen with the FDA’s decision to put COX-2 inhibitor
drugs back on the
market, even after admitting they killed 60,000+ Americans*2 – that’s higher than the number of Americans who died in
the entire Vietnam War!) * Note 2: This number is not just Vioxx and Celebrex but all deaths
resulting from people using the COX-2 inhibitor class of drugs. “Between the 1992 Act and 2004, 13 prescription drugs had to be withdrawn from the market (not counting the COX-2 inhibitors, Vioxx and Celebrex, which was only recently) after causing hundreds of deaths, versus only one herb (Ephedra) taken off the market.” – The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It, M. Angell, published by Random House, NY, 2004 The FDA continues to claim that the drugs they approve are “safe
and effective,” which includes the 13 that had to be pulled from the market between
1992 and 2004. Marsha Angell (above) said “hundreds of deaths.” Not included in
her book, the Cox-2 inhibitor, Vioxx (this deadly arthritis/pain-killer drug, had been
pulled from the market by its manufacturer, Merck & Co., Inc., not by the
government) contributed to 27,785 heart attacks or sudden cardiac deaths from 1999 to 2003
and Celebrex, a relatively new drug, has killed another 10 people, which the FDA says is
“an insignificant number.” Pfizer,
the manufacturer of Celebrex, halted its use after discovering that patients taking 400mg
to 800mg of Celebrex daily had 2.5 times greater risk of experiencing major heart problems. “Pharmaceutical companies manufacture and market hundreds of new drugs each year. Each product is regulated and approved by the Food and Drug Administration before it reaches the consumer, and every year over 200,000 people die from using these drugs. It is estimated that more than 50% of all the drugs marketed to the American consumer have deleterious effects, in spite of testing and FDA regulation.” – The Law Firm of Allen L. Rothenberg, InjuryLawyer.com (given that came from a lawyer, I don’t know how much to believe his numbers) J An FDA official, Dr. David Graham, is quoted as saying, “The FDA is serving as nothing more than an advocate for the pharmaceutical companies.” He’s taking a lot of heat for having publicly said that, too.
“The legalization of direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs in 1997 allowed firms to peddle their wares on TV, radio, and in newspapers and magazines.” – The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It, M. Angell, published by Random House, NY, 2004 “Ad spending tripled from $788 million in 1996 to $2.5 billion in
2000.” – Goozner, Merril, The 800 Million Dollar Pill, University
of California Press, CA, 2004 The estimate for 2005 is
that they will spend approximately $4,000,000,000 on ads trying to get you to ask your
doctor to prescribe this pill for you! In the pharmaceutical industry, this is known as The Push-Pull
Strategy. The pharmaceutical reps “push” the doctors into prescribing their
drugs. At the same time, TV and magazine ads are aimed at getting the consumer to “pull”
that prescription out of the doctor. “For every 100 office visits, doctors prescribed 146 drugs in 1999, up from 109 in 1985. The 50 most heavily advertised drugs accounted for nearly half the increase in spending.” – Goozner, Merril, The 800 Million Dollar Pill, University of California Press, CA, 2004 So, is the FDA on your side, or are they owned by the pharmaceutical
industry? Here are some interesting headlines from the newspapers. “Birth Control Patch Appears Riskier than the Pill; FDA Cites Safety” – AP You’ve no doubt seen the ad for this one on TV. That
headline was followed shortly by: “FDA, Drug Firm Defend Birth Control Patch’s Safety.” – AP So, one day the FDA says it isn’t safe, then for some unknown
reason (the appropriate bribe?), they suddenly change their minds? I see a few of you scratching your heads and saying, “Now wait a
minute. Doctors are not stupid. Even if they were trained in school to toe-the-line, they
have had years to figure this out, to gain experience, and to listen to other doctors’
experiences. And they have to take continuing education courses to keep their licenses.
They must know what’s going on.” Continuing education courses, given to doctors and nurses once or
twice a year, are provided by the pharmaceutical companies. Do you really think
these courses are going to tell them the truth? Here’s another newspaper headline: “To Sell Their Drugs, Companies Increasingly Rely on Doctors” with the subheading “For $750 and Up, Physicians Tell Their Peers About Products; Talks Called Educational.” – AP That’s right, the drug companies are also buying doctors
directly. They pay these doctors, usually respected professionals, to hawk their wares for
them. All they have to do is make it sound like they are “teaching” the latest
methods, procedures, etc., and then they collect a “speaking fee,” which, of
course, is always paid by a pharmaceutical company. There is also the somewhat dubious practice of paying doctors a fee
for every patient that they can prescribe an “experimental” drug to. None of
that money (reportedly $7,000 per patient) goes to the poor slob getting the experimental
drug, who surely will need it after using that drug. It all goes right into the doctor’s
pocket. Kind of makes you feel like a lab rat, doesn’t it? You say you don’t have to worry about this because you take your vitamins and use your good herbs and you rarely have to go to the doctor. Well, good for you. I noticed that the AMA has even put out a list of vitamins we should take, which, in and of itself, I find quite amazing. They have always pooh-poohed our need for things like that in the past, to the point where, when a former head of the FDA was once asked what his “beef” was against vitamins, he replied “They create a dis-incentive to the pharmaceutical industry.” Will this major BS ever stop? Sure, it will all eventually backfire,
but not until we get off our collective butts and force the situation to be reversed. We
have to let the government know we don’t like the situation. We have to let our
doctors know that we believe there’s a better way. But, above all else, we have to
take responsibility for our own lives. Maybe you can then step outside this vicious game
and you won’t have to worry about when things will change. You can change them for
yourself, starting right now! Tendinitis and Bursitis What Would I Do? by Le Anne Amber Today I’m going to talk about a subject near and dear (NOT!) to
my heart - tendinitis and bursitis. Even though they’re technically different, they
both cause severe pain in tendons and joints, so I’m going to lump them together. Tendinitis (the medical version,
which is also commonly spelled “tendonitis” for those of you who think this is
spelled wrong) is caused by inflammation of the tendon,
and sometimes, as in the case of tendinitis of the shoulder, pinching of the swollen
tendon in the joint. This feels something like having a knife abruptly stabbed into your
shoulder, and I can tell you this from personal experience. Bursitis is caused by inflammation of the bursa sac that normally
provides cushioning for your joints. This can make your joint feel as though you’d
just hit it very hard with a hammer. This I also know from personal experience. This is how it happened with me: Years ago, when I was a regular golfer (I played several times a week
and hit balls on the driving range practically every day I wasn’t playing), I
developed tendinitis in my left shoulder. That’s the one that stretches the most
during a golf swing (if you’re right-handed, that is). It got to be quite painful,
but I loved golf so much I was unwilling to give it up, so I went to a doctor, who
referred me to a sports therapist. The sports therapist told me I should be on a
prescription of Motrin, but if I wanted to save money, I could just take Advil at a rate
of 800 milligrams three times a day. At this time in my life, I didn’t know all the
things I do now, and I trusted that sports therapist (after all, he was wearing a white
lab smock), so I began taking Advil 2,400 milligrams a day, just like he told me to do. By
the way, not only did he not warn me about taking too much ibuprofen, he told me I
could take it in this dosage indefinitely! Well, the Advil did its work, and my
shoulder didn’t hurt too much as long as I was taking it three times a day. At this point,
let’s see what the PDR has to say about Advil (they have it listed under Motrin):
Motrin You should have frequent checkups with your doctor if you take Motrin regularly. Ulcers or internal bleeding can occur without warning. More common side effects may include: Abdominal cramps or pain, abdominal discomfort, bloating and
gas, constipation,
diarrhea, dizziness, fluid retention and swelling, headache
[yup, had those], heartburn, indigestion [that, too], itching, loss of appetite, nausea, nervousness, rash, ringing in ears, stomach
pain, vomiting. Less
common or rare side effects may include:
After moving from Portland to Redmond, Oregon, the golfing slowed down
considerably and then stopped altogether (it was just too expensive and I couldn’t
afford it anymore). My shoulder still gave me fits, though, and so I continued taking
Advil to relieve the pain. About this time I started hearing vague murmurings from various
sources about ibuprofen causing stomach bleeding and/or liver damage, which caused me some
concern, especially because I seemed to have a bleeding ulcer by then, so I started
looking for something that would help my ulcer and strengthen my liver. I drank some
comfrey tea for a few days until my stomach settled down and quit bleeding, and I knew
that dandelion root was very good for the liver, so I dug up some roots from the yard,
dried them, ground them up, and started making a tea out of them that I drank every day.
The funny thing was, after a couple of weeks on the dandelion tea, I suddenly realized
that I hadn’t taken any Advil in over a week and my shoulder didn’t hurt
anymore! Go figure. Eventually, my shoulder tendon healed and I didn’t even need
the dandelion root tea. This part of my story reminds me of that joke where the guy walks
into the doctor’s office and says “Doc, it hurts when I do this”, and the doctor says “Then don’t do
that”. Except in my case the doc said, “Here, take this pill” instead. How
very typical. Since Rich and I have lived on the farm here in South Dakota, I’ve
noticed some more new aches and pains. The doc said they’re caused from
working too hard. I thought it was just because I was getting old. One of the pains was a
new episode of tendinitis in my right elbow, which became so bad that I literally couldn’t
lift my coffee cup or even eat with my right hand anymore. The pain was absolutely
incredible. Poor Rich had to wash the dishes for me because I couldn’t stand to move
my elbow at all. And all the walking I do was causing both my heels to hurt very badly. (I
must admit here, I self-diagnosed the bursitis in my heels – all of my symptoms were
listed in my med books as bursitis of the heel.) In the mornings, it sometimes took me
five or ten minutes of painful heel stretching just to be able to get out of bed and stand
up. It would eventually work itself out, but if I sat still for just a few minutes, both
heels would seize up again and I had to go through that stretching thing again, which
really hurt. Needless to say, I limped a lot. And, as if that weren’t enough, both my
knees had become very painful any time I put weight on a bent leg, such as going up or
down stairs (we have lots of those), sitting down or getting up from a chair, etc. Not
quite hurting enough to say it felt like a knife going into my knees, but at least a fork.
In other words, they hurt pretty bad. Over this last winter, things cleared up a bit because I wasn’t
spending hours and hours every day upside down in the garden pulling weeds or walking
miles at a time back and forth from the house to the garden to the greenhouse to the
garden, etc. But Spring arrived and I started my outside work again and BAM! It came back
even worse. I was so distressed because I thought if I can’t get my chores done, they
won’t get done! I finally got desperate enough to go to the doctor again,
figuring she’d just tell me to take Advil. I asked her if there was anything else she
could suggest instead. She said, yeah, stop using your elbow and don’t walk. ARGH!
Other than that, all she could suggest was icing the sore spots several times a day. It was right about this time (the day after that doctor visit, I
think) that I saw Know The Cause! for the first time. I was channel surfing one
morning and the title of the show intrigued me, so I watched the remainder of that
episode. Doug Kaufmann had Natasha Trenev on the show that day and they were talking about
probiotics. They mentioned inflammation in passing as being caused by a fungal overgrowth.
I don’t think they were specifically referring to tendinitis or bursitis, but hey,
inflammation is inflammation, right? I was so desperate that I asked Rich if we could just
try some probiotics for me to see if it would help. I had my doubts, but what the
heck? What if it worked? We kind of tossed the idea around for a few days and
finally broke down and ordered a small bottle of Healthy Trinity from Natren Co. If
it didn’t work, at least I could say that I tried it. Since Doug and Natasha had said
that most inflammation was fungal in nature, I figured to get faster results I’d have
to also take some sort of anti-fungal as well. Because the probiotics aren’t cheap,
there wasn’t any money left in the budget to get any of the health-store types of
anti-fungals such as olive leaf extract or capryllic acid, so I did the next best thing. I
made an herbal tea from wild thyme and rosemary with a couple of cinnamon sticks thrown
in. All three are antimicrobial. I had my tea in the mornings and my probiotic after
dinner. The rest is history. Within two weeks of starting with the tea and probiotics, my pain was
down to very manageable levels. I could go out and pull weeds for seven hours and not have
debilitating pain. I still felt it in my elbow a bit, but it didn’t hurt enough for
me to stop weeding. After thirty days, it was all gone. Just gone! No more pain in
my elbow, none in either knee, none in my left heel, and just a twinge now and then in my
right heel. But I can get right out of bed now and walk without pain from that very
minute. I still feel tired after a hard day working outside, but I’m not laid up for
three days afterward like I used to be. Now I can get up the next morning and I feel as if
I hadn’t done a single bit of work the previous day. My stamina has increased
dramatically, and also my recovery time after physical labor. Honestly, I feel twenty
years younger than I did a couple of months ago. So what does all this tell you? It was a systemic fungal infection all
along. And it’s not like I didn’t ask for it. Literally. I’ve always eaten
a fairly healthy diet, but I did drink wine and eat Doritos a lot (not at the same time!),
and I’ve eaten my share of fast food and other “bad” things. And while I
lived in Portland, I was sick all the time. The doctor told me I had chronic bronchitis
and there wasn’t anything he could do except give me antibiotics, so I had those
about twice a year, every year. I thought that was what you were supposed to do
when you got sick! Ask any doctor. Although, I remember once I had a visit with a doctor I
hadn’t seen before because I was all congested and sniffly and had bronchitis again
and he told me to go home and go to bed! I was incensed that he wouldn’t give me any antibiotics! I even asked
him for a prescription and he said they wouldn’t do any good. I went home mad and was
properly miserable for several days. I’m so glad now that he didn’t give me
those antibiotics. Maybe he didn’t know I had a systemic fungal infection, but at
least he was courageous enough to stand up and say “NO” to the prescription,
because he knew it wasn’t bacterial. I only wish the other doctors had done
the same thing. Now I’m taking Natren’s probiotics every day and I’ve
cleaned up my diet considerably. When I eat something I shouldn’t, I know it.
For instance, yesterday my “won’t-power” left me in the dust and I had a
Grasshopper Milkshake (chocolate and mint). Hey, it was really hot out and that milkshake
was calling to me! I knew I’d have to pay for it, and sure enough, this morning both
my heels were speaking to me vigorously. At least my elbow didn’t join in the fray...
And a couple of weeks ago, I ate an ear of corn right out of the garden (I like it raw
better than cooked), and the next morning, everything hurt! I’m still in the process of trying to rid myself of this fungal
infection. In my case, even though it’s apparently very widespread, at least it didn’t
cause too many really severe problems. But it is entrenched and I’m sure it will take
a bit more work to eradicate it. Not that I can rest on my laurels when it’s gone,
because I’ll just get it again if I eat the wrong foods, and I’m constantly
exposed to airborne fungi. But once it’s down to where my own healthy immune system
can handle what little I do become exposed to, I’ll consider myself “cured.”
And now that I’m armed with knowledge, I can identify future problems before
they become problems. Remember, knowledge is power. |