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Who should be making decisions about your health? The government, Big Pharma, your healthcare provider or you? More importantly, do you feel you should have the right to make your own choices concerning your health?
When it comes to medical treatment, there are a lot of factors that play a role in your recovery, including pharmaceutical companies (Big Pharma). Because there is a demand for pain relief, this billion dollar industry helps regularly supply Americans with pills, form relationships with physicians in getting them to prescribe their medication and now, are a huge player in the growing drug addiction crisis.
In fact, recently The New York Times reported that Purdue Pharma knew early on that the drug they marketed, OxyContin, was widely abused, but continued to market it as less addictive, concealing that information from the public. This goes directly against their previous claims that they were “unaware of the powerful opioid growing abuse until years after it went on the market.”
So, how is it that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is approving drugs that are often abused and/or unsafe for consumers? Below we dive into Big Pharma and their relationship with the FDA and the dangers they pose to you, the consumer. We also discuss another alternative — stem cell therapy — to treating various injuries and illnesses.
What is the relationship between the FDA and Big Pharma? They, in fact, have a very symbiotic relationship. Big Pharma companies need approval from the FDA to sell the drug, while the FDA needs more drugs in circulation to help fund their organization. According to drugwatch.com, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) receives two-thirds of its budget from pharmaceutical companies — through application/user fees. So, in the end, both need each other in order to prosper.
As such, critics have found that Big Pharma uses many manipulative tactics to help sway the FDA, lawmakers and the public to approve and buy the drugs.
These tactics include:
Drugs produced via counterfeit methods—putting less effective products in circulation.
Drugs are registered with insufficient information or incorrect information.
Royalties collected through manipulation.
Ghostwriting clinical trials.
Influence multiple healthcare realms, including medical researchers, medical schools, and teaching hospitals.
Paying doctors to participate in surveys of medicines they have never prescribed before.
Pharmaceutical companies buying positive reviews of the drug’s safety and effectiveness to reputable medical journals.
Because of this, the Big Pharma industry and its corruption can hinder your health and it’s important to thoroughly research options and discuss them with your healthcare provider.
Last year, a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that a third of the drugs the FDA approved between 2001 and 2010 were “involved in some kind of safety event after reaching the market.”
Another danger involves speeding up the FDA’s drug approval process. In the Journal of the American Medical Association study, one of the study’s authors, Joseph Ross, discussed the concerns about accelerating the FDA process as they found that the drugs that were previously accelerated through the process were associated with higher rates of postmarket safety issues. He explained that this accelerated approval process has “the potential for compromising patient safety.”
As such, not only are some FDA drugs unsafe, one side effect of being an overprescribed nation (nearly 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug) is overdose deaths. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) analysis of 2016 U.S. drug overdose data shows that America’s overdose epidemic is spreading geographically and increasing across demographic groups. Drug overdoses killed 63,632 Americans in 2016 and 66% involved a prescription or illicit opioid. That’s more lives lost than the lives lost for the entirety of the Vietnam War. Additionally, prescription drugs are the third most commonly abused category of drugs, after alcohol and marijuana.
