Thanks to Pharma's "diagnose early" and screening campaigns, millions of children are treated with stimulants for ADHD and antipsychotics for bipolar disorder and assorted conduct, oppositional defiant, development disorders and "spectrums" today. No wonder Michael Bandick, brand manager for Eli Lilly's p opular antipsychotic Zyprexa , called it "the molecule that keeps on giving," at a national sales meeting. But giving kids daily drugs creates two problems. Parents will never know if they would have outgrown their conditions and" it's unlikely they'll ever get "clean." In fact, Pharma marketers worry about the revenue threat of kids going off their meds when they leave home and runs an ad campaign in college newspapers to keep them on. One ad shows the lead singer of Maroon 5, declaring, "I remember being the kid with ADHD. Truth is, I still have it." "It's Your ADHD. Own It," is the ad's tag line.
Hormone Replacement Therapy
When the popular HRT pill Prempro was launched by Wyeth, now
Pfizer, in the 1980s, then CEO Bob Essner told sales associates. "We can make
real the full promise of HRT to create in the near future a world where the
majority of women will start HRT at menopause and continue on it for the rest
of their lives," reports Philadelphia
magazine . The scheme of treating estrogen "deficiency" for 30 or 40
years worked until 2002 when HRT was found to cause breast cancer, heart
attacks, strokes, blood clots and dementia. They were some of the conditions it
was supposed to prevent. Oops. But Pharma has not abandoned the billion dollar
franchise and news about estrogen benefits
is creeping back
into the news, predicated on the public's short memory. People don't
lose hormones because they age, they age because they lose hormones, say Pharma
hormone sellers. Even men are now suffer from testosterone deficiencies or Low
T.
Happy Pills
Pharma's success in convincing people with anxiety or the "blues" that they need an antidepressant was a Wall Street coup. Instead of taking the occasional Xanax, people agreed to alter their entire body chemistry with a drug they took for months, years or decades. But as antidepressants fall in popularity, because of their many side effects including alarming "discontinuation symptoms" when people try to stop, WebMD is conducting damage control to keep people on them. Don't believe that antidepressants turn "you into a zombie," make you gain weight, ruin your sex life, make you "forget your problems rather than dealing with them" or cost too much, says the huge pro-pill website in one article. Depression is linked to heart disease, obesity, diabetes, Alzheimer's and cancer says a second WebMD article. Stay on your meds.
Proton Pump Inhibitors (PPIs)
Some say gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is just lowly "heartburn" whipped up by Pharma into a profitable disease. But over 110 million prescriptions were written for proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) like Nexium and Prevacid in 2009, making it the third most prescribed class of drugs. Long-term use of PPIs increases the risk of hip, wrist and spine fractures, the FDA warns and the drugs can cause potentially lethal C. difficile-caused diarrhea and community-acquired pneumonia says national health advocacy group, Public Citizen. But Pharma has a different message. GERD can lead to esophageal inflammation, scar tissue and cancer, if untreated, it tells patients and symptoms won't go way on their own. No wonder doctors call PPIs "Purple Crack."
http://www.citizen.org/documents/1964.pdf
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