Evenity linked to deadly bone drug side effects
Ever since the massive Women's Health Initiative (WHI) found, 22 years ago, that hormone replacement therapy (HRT) increased the risk of heart attacks by 29 percent, breast cancer by 26 percent, stroke by 41 percent and doubled the risk of blood clots, drug makers have sought a replacement for its lucrative franchise.
Why? Because HRT may have also doubled the risk of dementia in women who took it and have increase the risk of hearing loss, gallbladder disease, urinary incontinence, asthma, melanoma, ovarian, endometrial, lung cancers and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma but it did strengthen bone. And drug makers want their money and all the women who quit HRT back!
Soon after the WHI debacle, drug makers began marketing new drugs that allegedly spared bone like Fosamax, Boniva, and Actonel, which are known as bisphosphonates to reclaim their lost customers. C'mon ladies!
There was just one problem. While the drugs stopped "bone resorption"--loss of bone--they also stopped the rebuilding of new bone as some doctors and scientists had predicted they would. This not only led to brittle bones and caused fractures, it caused jawbone death or osteonecrosis of the jaw, in some cases causing women to lose their actual jaws.
While drug makers pretended they did not know about the deadly side-effect when dentists and oral surgeon first notified them, Merck, one of the drug makers, knew about the likely effect since 1977 according to legal documents. The drugs were also linked to intractable pain and esophageal cancer.
Just as drug makers sold HRT with sexism--"when women outlive their ovaries" said one gauche ad--they also did so with bone drugs. Don't look old; don't get bent over, trumpeted the bone drug marketing, using movie stars as pitch women.
Feminists, patient advocates and drug safety activists bristled at the fear and sexism-based marketing of the "disease" of "osteoporosis" which women were said to be condemned to get. Drug makers placed bone density machines in doctor offices, got their drugs paid for by taxpayers and invented the term, "osteopenia"--like they invented the term "perimenopause"--Ka ching. Meanwhile, exercise, weight-bearing exercises and calcium sparing diets protected bones just fine, drug makers.
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