Categories: Community, Drug Related, Education, Health & Wellness, Social Change, Society and Culture Tags: college humor, Drug Related
Surprising new studies on statins dispute & reputation of big pharma: media silent on nutrition
by Anne Hart
Sacramento radio, at least on one sports station, is finally alerting average listeners to the latest medical studies on statins as related to the risks and benefit. The studies are pointing to statins raising more risk of harm than benefits of health for average cardiovascular disease and stroke risk folks. Also check out my other Examiner article, “Are too many doctors paid to advocate statin use?”
It’s looking more like statins aren’t reducing that many heart attacks and strokes after all, according to the latest studies on statins. Basically, it’s one of the radio talk show personalities that yesterday (and repeated this morning) has let the public know more about the latest studies on statins and where to read one study. Also read the June 29, 2010 Los Angeles Times article by Melissa Healy about this latest study, Rift Over Statins.
You also can read the study from its primary source, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Read the study yourself, “Statins and All-Cause Mortality in High-Risk Primary Prevention: A Meta-analysis of 11 Randomized Controlled Trials Involving 65,229 Participants.” Archives of Internal Medicine, 2010; 170(12):1024-1031. You also might want to take a look at the article, “Drug Company Pleads Guilty to Health Fraud,” Life Extension magazine, March 2010.
The media is now disseminating this dispute between medical studies and the claims of the big prescription drug industries. The consumers’ questions keep asking whether most doctors are controlled by big pharma’s claims? And what happens to dissenting doctors that don’t want to prescribe? Do they get intimidated by insurance companies who may want them to prescribe in order to get insurance?
Also a British study of more than 2 million patients found that those using statins were significantly more likely to suffer cataracts.The five-year study found that for every 10,000 patients on statins, up to 307 more had cataracts than non-statin users. Read the article about the study, “Heart drugs may increase cataract, kidney failure risk,” published May 22, 2010 in The Age.
Patients and consumers in general wonder whether doctors who don’t prescribe drugs, but use nutrition and certain supplements instead, usually make patients pay out of pocket because the doctors can’t get insurance based on nutritional solutions or treatments using food-based products such as vitamins or minerals?
These are questions patients have about the decision to go with statins. Patients have to decide as a first line of treatment whether to go with food as medicine without being called a quack follower–unless of course, you work with licensed dietitians with R.D. certification or nutritionists and naturopaths with M.D. or D.O. degrees who really know their food biochemistry.
Basically, disputes almost always are about following the big money. And when it comes down to statins or any other drug, the lawyers are waiting in the wings for symptoms to show up. So what’s the latest statins dispute about? The answer is the reputation of drugs. How are the various media handling news of the statins studies?
The dispute in the latest news concerns statins, the cholesterol-lowering prescription drugs that earn about $26 billion a year for their makers. Basically, news articles and medical studies in scientific journals are pummeling the reputation of the widely prescribed medications in one area even as it advanced their stature in another.
A meta-analysis — a review of previous studies — published in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that statins do not lower death rates among patients with risk factors but no evidence of established cardiovascular disease who take them as a preventive measure, according to the Los Angeles Times article.
Categories: Business & Finance, Drug Related, Health & Wellness, Social Change Tags: Anne Hart, big pharma, Cultural change, Social Change
Drugsters in Academia: How Big Pharma “Educates” American Doctors
The pharmaceutical industry has wormed its way into the hearts and minds of the medical professions in any number of ways—wining and dining doctors, sending them off to vacation in splendid spas, and even buying their names to put on industry-written articles promoting different drugs.
One little known facet of this drugster-doctor relationship is Big Pharma’s role in continuing medical education (CME) programs, which are important in keeping medical professionals informed and up to date on the fast developing profession. Of the $2 billion-odd spent on these programs every year, nearly half comes from the drug business, which not-so-subtly uses the education programs to push new drugs.
Last week a conference at Georgetown University called “Prescription for Conflict” pulled together experts from academia, government, and industry to discuss the question: Should industry fund continuing medical education? The main instigator here is a former colleague of mine named Adriane Fugh- Berman, a doctor and teacher at Georgetown University Medical School. Fugh-Berman long ago became the nemesis of Big Pharma with a stream of articles and talks questioning the different aspects of liaison between the drugsters and the medical profession. I worked with her helping to set up PharmedOut.org, a website that seeks to educate the public on these liaisons, in part through exposes, both written and on video.
The conference at Georgetown included few critics as candid as Fugh-Berman. Those gathered included polite academics with hedged criticism of industry funding, and regulators like Joshua Sharfstein, principal deputy commissioner at the FDA, and Julie Taitsman, chief medical officer the Department of Health and Human Services, who presented a list of the different laws protecting the public. By the time they finished, I was so frustrated with government bureaucrats that I was about ready to join the Tea Party (except that they, of course, would want to do even less to control the greedmeisters at Big Pharma).
One blunt critique came from Paul Thacker, an investigator for Senate Republican Charles Grassley, who has been the most visible Congressional muckraker on the doctor-drug company love-in. Thacker bluntly told the docs to get off their supercilious “who me?” attitude and come to grips with the scarcely believable conflicts of interest existing between the medical profession and the drug industry–conflicts that more often than not have been to the detriment of their patients.
Categories: Drug Related, Education, Health & Wellness, Social Change Tags: Adriane Fugh- Berman, big pharma, CME programs, Jimmy Ridgeway, medical education, medical industry
Cannabis Reduces Infant Mortality
by Storm CrowSurprisingly connections between “Failure-to-Thrive” and Cannabinoids.
 Image from a story about the Use Of Non-Psychoactive Cannabinoids In The Treatment Of Neurodegenerative Diseases from Science Daily
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(NORTHERN CALIFORNIA) – Years ago, a friend of mine, a good Christian lady, had a child with “failure to thrive”. She had CPS all over her, looking for even the tiniest trace of child neglect. They found none. The child was well cared for, but she just didn’t seem that interested in eating. Her bottles often went half finished.
I believe that those bottles of formula, given from birth, were major part of the problem. Our bodies make chemicals called “endocannabinoids” that are closely related to THC and cannabidiol (CBD). Endocannabinoids control many bodily functions and are excreted into breast milk. When lactating female rabbits were injected with CBD, a non-psychoactive, plant-derived cannabinoid, there was “a significant accumulation of the drug in milk.” [1]
Endocannabinoids are also detected in human and cow’s milk, with the highest levels occurring the day after giving birth. This healthy dose of naturally-occurring endocannabinoids stimulates the suckling reflex in newborn mammals, including humans[2].
When newborn mice are given a chemical to block the effect between endocannabinoids and their CB receptors, the mice simply don’t know how to eat.Yet, if the blocking agent is mixed with an equivalent amount of THC, the mice eat and grow normally[3].
CB receptors work kind of like an ignition switch. First, you need the right kind of “key” (the right-shaped cannabinoid) to go into the “keyhole” (the receptor) to turn on the “engine’s” action (suckling, stopping pain or inflammation, or maybe killing a cancer cell). Phytocannabinoids (cannabinoids from plants, like THC) can mimic the effects of your endocannabinoids- they can turn on the same “ignition switches” as your body’s own cannabinoids. The blocking agents (antagonists) are like sticking a broken key stub in the keyhole. You can’t get a real key in, and the engine can’t turn on.
Scientists have bred mice that do not have CB receptors. They are poor, sickly things, prone to all sorts of ailments. Some scientists believe that there are people like those mice, having fewer than normal, or dysfunctional, CB receptors. And infants born with this condition have growth failure resulting from an inability to ingest food, just like those newborn mice[4].)
If “failure to thrive” infants were being breast-fed, they would get at least some of their mother’s normal endocannabinoids from her milk. If she were using cannabis, logically, her breast milk would contain not only her own endocannabinoids, but also the phytocannabinoids, THC and CBD. In CB receptor-deficient children, an extra dose of phytocannabinoids could make the difference between “failure to thrive” and a healthy child! However, since receptor deficiency is inheritable, the mother may be deficient, too, and unable to give her child sufficient amounts of endocannabinoids in her milk.
But all this is just conjecture on my part. Just me, grouping together various studies to make a theory about “failure to thrive” babies. Medical science surely isn’t going to say that having Mom smoking a little pot in the evening is going to help her baby do better, is it?
Well, tonight, I found a study that seems to say just that! It’s a sad little thing- an abstract of a study on the death of babies- yet vital facts can be learned from those soulless statistical studies. This one gave the infant death rates per 1,000 live births, and the drugs, if any, that the mother used during pregnancy.
A total of 2,964 babies were drug-tested at birth to see if they were positive for drugs- cocaine, opioids or cannabis were studied. 44% of the infants tested positive for all varieties of drugs, including the 3 being studied. During the first two years of their lives, 44 babies from the original group, died. Since statistics are a drag to slog through, I’ll cut right to the chase- the deaths per thousand live births- the numbers tell the story.
“No drugs at birth” deaths……. 15.7 deaths per 1000 live births
“Cocaine positive” deaths…….17.7 deaths per 1000 live births
“Opiate positive” deaths…….18.4 deaths per 1000 live births
“Cannabis positive” deaths…. 8.9 deaths per 1000 live births [5]
The cocaine and opiate babies have a higher death rate than the “No drugs” babies- that was to be expected. But look at the “cannabis” babies! Having extra cannabinoids in their bodies at birth (and likely later, from 2nd hand exposure, or breast milk) seems to have some sort of a protective effect. The “cannabis” infants have a mortality rate almost half of what the “No drugs” infants have!
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/june272010/marijuana-infants-sc.php
Categories: Drug Related, Health & Wellness, Social Change Tags: cannabidiol, Cannabinoids, cannabis, CBD, endocannabinoids, Infant Mortality, Storm Crow, THC
Abuse of meds sends as many to ER as illegal drugs
By MIKE STOBBE
For the first time, abuse of painkillers and other medication is sending as many people to the emergency room as the use of illegal drugs.
In 2008, ERS saw an estimated 1 million visits from people abusing prescription or over-the-counter medicines — mostly painkillers and sedatives. That was about the same number of visits from those overdosing on heroin, cocaine and other illegal drugs, according to a government report released Thursday.
Only five years earlier, illegal drug visits outnumbered those from legal medications by a 2-to-1 margin.
In other words, the number of ER visits from medication abuse doubled, said Peter Delany of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
“It’s a pretty startling jump,” Delany said. He led a team that worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the report.
Painkillers and sedatives clearly drove the trend. ER visits for the painkillers oxycodone and hydrocodone more than doubled from 2004 to 2008. And cases from one kind of tranquilizer nearly doubled.
The estimates are based on emergency room data from more than 200 U.S. hospitals. Many of the cases may be overdoses, but some may come from mixing drugs or combining them with alcohol, Delany said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100617/ap_on_he_me/us_med_prescription_abuse
Categories: Drug Related, Health & Wellness Tags: Mike Stobbe
Categories: Drug Related, Health & Wellness, Social Change Tags: Montel, Soros, Sting
