Nor do the bone drugs even prevent fractures--their intended purpose! By suppressing bone remodeling, they are supposed to stop bone loss. But since the bone is not being renewed, it becomes brittle, ossified and fractures. The thigh bones of patients on bisphosphonates have "simply snapped while they were walking or standing," after "weeks or months of unexplained aching," reported the New York Times in an article called "Drugs to Build Bones May Weaken Them." Oops. Medical journals and patients on the web site askapatient have been reporting the fractures for years.
At the 2010 American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons annual meeting in New Orleans, doctors were actually shown the qualitative differences in bisphosphonate treated bone and could see how the bone had degraded over four years of treatment. Half the doctors at one presentation said they'd seen patients with bisphosphonate- compromised bone personally, when asked, reported the Los Angeles Times.
It should be embarrassing to the medical establishment and Medicare administrators that the drug industry and its paid celebrities drove the mania for the bone scans, "osteopenia" and bone drugs. Look how Today host Meredith Vieira helped.
"When I became menopausal, my doctor recommended I get a bone mineral density test. I had never even heard of it, to be quite honest. I thought, 'I'm in great health, great shape. I have no symptoms. Why do I need this?'" she told USA Today . "To illustrate how ignorant I was when I had the test done, I asked where I could change and the nurse told me I didn't need to take off my clothes. They did a test on my heel, hip and spine, which only took a matter of five minutes. And it was totally painless. It's so simple to do."
And it should be even more embarrassing that the con only surfaced when the biggest bone drug patents are expired so the drug companies don't even care--because the big bucks are behind them.
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