Too much information but none of it credible

Feb/25/2008 05:02 Filed in: DTC Environment
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A flood of drug safety warnings from the Food and Drug Administration may have physicians and patients suffocating from information saturation. Experts say there are too many red flags for them to pay attention so what's happening is that many people have stopped taking their medications without consulting their physician. The drug companies are to blame along with the FDA that seems more intent in pulling ads because a spokesperson is not a licensed physician rather that come up with a system to distribute credible information to patients.




It seems that almost weekly we're getting a safety missive," said Les Funtleyder, an analyst who covers the pharmaceutical industry for trading firm Miller Tabak. "We're almost getting safety fatigue." Every night you can turn on the news and find out that a bunch of things now have safety concerns: coffee, meat, red wine, the list goes on and on. Celebrities talk about how pharmaceutical companies are poisoning us and not one drug company has done anything to provide up to date information on potential new side effects reported by patients.


How hard would it be to include an area of the product website with updated side effects as reported by patients? Oh, that's right this might hurt sales and we can't have that ! Transparency ? We don't need no stinkin' transparency !


So patients are taking upon themselves to stop taking medications which could lead to higher health costs. The FDA, rather then being proactive, is more concerned with ads then giving empowered patients the information they need to make the right choices. Just look at the stories coming out about the use of statins? Statins have been associated with everything from cognitive disorder to chronic leg pain. Just Google Lipitor and leg pain and look at the results. So what is happening is that people are saying "enough is enough" and becoming their own doctors.


In the first two months of this year, the FDA has issued 16 safety alerts or market recalls for drugs and other medical products, such as devices. At that rate, it will have issued 96 by the end of this year. That's a lot at a time when aging baby boomers need more meds to stay healthy. Pharma continues to hide behind its concrete wall and pretend that patients health is important when we all know that the only thing that is important to them is the stock price and profits.

From a story on money.cnn.com

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