Why We Need Universal Health Care and Strict Regulation of the Pharmaceutical Industry.

Yesterday I posted about the accumulating research that Prozac and other anti-depressant medications are being prescribed far too widely as a mood enhancers or stress buster perhaps and are hardly more effective than placebos, except for physical and their drain on patients pocketbooks. Now I would like to call attention to similar reports about cholesterol-lowering statins which do not live up to their claims.

Extensive marketing campaigns by pharmaceutical companies directly to consumers has put pressure on doctors to presceribe them, especially when the time spent on patient visits is so limited these day. Going along with the patient is no doubt the easier road for the pressured phycisian, particularly when the drug companies give them personal incentives to prescribe their products. This is compounded by the fact that drug companies routinely are slow to release negative experimental results, and there is weak regulatory control from the FDA under the present Adminstration.

I believe that that the marketing of prescription drugs directly to consumers through paid commercials and other promotionals by the pharmaceutical companies should be banned and there should be oversight of how Big pharm is "lobbying" the medical profession. Financial grants to the medical profession and "non-profit" research should be redirected through government agencies who have oversight powers and can insight upon standards. The high cost of prescription drugs in the United States, is one of the main health-cost inflators and is either passed on directly to the consumer or passed on through in higher insurance rates. That is not the subject matter of the articles I am posting, just my thoughts about why these latest results are so important.

My original post follows following this update.

Anyway here is the skinny on statins. Let me say by way of disclosure my doctor and I have been fighting the no-I-won't, yes-you-will battle for a long time now. I, cynic that I am ,have taken to reading the small print on side effects, and as someone with serious arthritis and other similar problems, I especially noticed that one of the side effects of taking statins is increased muscle weakness and pain. Now it seems that reports are also coming out that women who take statins on occasion seem to suffer such extreme memory loss that they are misdiagnosed as having alzheimer's disease. Makes you stop and think. What is causing our alzheimer's epidemic?

Here goes on the statins and see below for the prozac story, re-posted/

I direct everyone's attention to a story, The Cholesterol Con--Where Were the Doctors? which appears in two parts on Maggie Mahar's blog Health Beat. She apparently has written several books. I cannot vouch for her credentials; however the article has a number of useful links. Here is an excerpt--the links appear in the original.

In other words, researchers are questioning the bedrock assumption that high levels of “bad cholesterol” cause heart disease. “Higher LDL levels do help set the stage for heart disease by contributing to the buildup of plaque in arteries. But something else has to happen before people get heart disease,” Dr. Ronald M. Krauss, director of atherosclerosis research at the Oakland Research Institute, told Business Week. "When you look at patients with heart disease, their cholesterol levels are not that [much] higher than those without heart disease," he added. “Compare countries, for example. Spaniards have LDL levels similar to Americans', but less than half the rate of heart disease. The Swiss have even higher cholesterol levels, but their rates of heart disease are also lower. Australian aborigines have low cholesterol but high rates of heart disease.”

“Current evidence supports ignoring LDL cholesterol altogether," Dr. Rodney A. Hayward, professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan, told Business Week’s reporter

In recent years, researchers have begun to suspect that statins help patients, not by lowering cholesterol levels, but by reducing inflammation. If this theory is right, “this seems likely to shunt cholesterol reduction into a small corner of the overall picture of heart disease,” the Guardian reported four years ago..

She has also posted a second part

Here is my original post:

A new study claims that Prozac is no more effective as an anti-depressive medication than a placebo. The creation of the Prozac myth. This article appeared in the British Guardian and includes some follow up commentary, also of interest.

From what I have read, including this article, it seems to me that some people who suffer from serious depression may well benefit from anti-depressions, but that they are prescribed and consumed by a much wider percent of the population. For example a 2004 survey estimated that around 30% of US college students take anti-depressants.

Since I was caught up in fountain-of-youth-dreams about the beneficial results of estrogen/progesterone therapy for post-menapausal women, I have been a big-time skeptic about our pill-popping culture. Here is an article that discusses new evidence about what I would call the anti-depressant craze. By this I mean the way in which the net of behaviors now officially labelled as psychosis and the spread of pricey drugs to treatment have grown in tandem.

In the 20 years since its launch, 40m people worldwide have taken the so-called wonder drug - but research revealed this week shows that Prozac, and similar antidepressants, are no more effective than a sugar pill. So how was the myth created? Psychoanalyst Darian Leader traces the irrepressible rise of the multibillion dollar depression industry, while others explore the clinical and cultural impact of Prozac, its perceived personal benefits - and sometimes terrible costs