|
|
| Medicine Information |
|
|
Are Drug Companies Destroying The U.S. Health Care System?
The U.S. government's annual bill for healthcare spending $3,925 per person significantly exceeds that of all other nations. Despite this, our current health care system is increasingly failing both patients and medical practitioners. Of 13 nations, the U.S. is last for neonatal and infant mortality, last for years of potential life lost, 10th for age-adjusted mortality, 11th and 12th for female and male life expectancy respectively. Chronic degenerative diseases heart disease, cancer, arthritis, obesity, etc. are at epidemic levels and create the ideal long-term customers to grow the medical industry. Looking for a culprit? Consider that pharmaceutical company profits are so large they outstrip every other American industry by far. Americans spend over $500 billion on drugs. The drug companies claim that they need large earnings ($124,835,595,000 in 1999, for example) to conduct their research, but just one of every five dollars the drug industry collects actually goes to drug research. Some drug companies spend twice as much annually for marketing and advertising. From the years 1996 to 2001, pharmaceutical companies spent $3 billion on consumer advertising. Many of the advertised pharmaceuticals are not (contrary to popular belief) FDA-approved, and the information contained in the advertisements is often misleading and not entirely accurate. Now there is even a new wave of drugs being marketed to alleviate the side effects of other drugs being marketed (e.g. NexiumTM to relieve digestive problems created by pain killers). Pharmaceutical companies have enormous influence on physicians through the billions of dollars of marketing resources. Drug companies in the U.S. spend, on average, $10,000 each year per physician to influence their behavior through subsidizing studies in major journals, aggressive marketing by drug reps (in some instances trained exactly how long to shake a doctor's hand), advertisements and sponsorship of medical education programs for doctors and medical residents. (Such support of education and science subtly brainwashes physicians into thinking symptom-based medicine is sound knowledge and science as well.) Is it any surprise that two thirds of visits to doctors' offices result in a drug being prescribed? Some patients may be on numerous medications prescribed by various specialists while not one of them knows, or could even predict, the health consequences of the interactions. (I recently discovered that my elderly mother, suffering from a variety of ailments, including dementia, was on 17 different medications. Not only did she not know what she was taking or when she did, neither did any of her physicians.) Little wonder pharmaceutical toxicity is one of the major factors contributing to medical care being the leading cause of death in the U.S. (Why Modern Medicine is the Greatest Threat to Health, http://www.wysong.net/health/post_77_061902.shtml) Aside from profiteering and marketing, the most fundamental flaw in the system is philosophical. Doctors and pharmaceutical companies think about names of diseases and removal of symptoms, not cure or prevention. They chase, but the race is rigged so they never catch. Enabling such a system to prosper and flourish is a public that also has a flawed philosophy. They want to live life as they choose, carpe diem, thinking only of momentary relief, pleasure and convenience. When something goes wrong with their health they don't want instruction on how to change lifestyle, but rather want to use the power of money (preferably the government's) to buy their way out with a silver drug bullet that immediately takes the problem away. We spend much for dying, little for living. American health will continue to slip and our economy will continue to be drained by a failing healthcare system until the underlying flawed philosophies are changed. Medicine must change from naming diseases and treating symptoms to prevention and cure. Yes, that means the medical care system should be trying to put itself out of business, not create a growth industry of illness. On the other hand, people must change by taking the responsibility for controlling their own health destiny. As it stands, the public has become a pawn of commercial medical interests. Ultimately health is something we do to ourselves, not something others do to us. When that fact is faced, the medical-pharmaceutical complex will shrivel to a cottage industry and the public will be the better for it. (Br Med J, 2003; 326:416 http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/326/7386/416/b. N Engl J Med, 2002; 346:498-505, 524-531 http://content.nejm.org/content/vol346/issue7/index.shtml.) Dr. Wysong is a former veterinary clinician and surgeon, college instructor in human anatomy, physiology and the origin of life, inventor of numerous medical, surgical, nutritional, athletic and fitness products and devices, research director for the present company by his name and founder of the philanthropic Wysong Institute. He is author of The Creation-Evolution Controversy now in its eleventh printing, a new two volume set on philosophy for living entitled Thinking Matters: 1-Living Life... As If Thinking Matters; 2-The Big Questions...As If Thinking Matters, several books on nutrition, prevention and health for people and animals and over 15 years of monthly health newsletters. He may be contacted at Wysong@Wysong.net and a free subscription to his e-Health Letter is available at http://www.wysong.net
Medicine - Google News |
|
|
|
Alternative Medicine Protect Yourself Against the Flu Vaccine! The vaccine industry insists that their vaccines against the flu serve as the key to a healthy winter. Although there has not been a serious flu epidemic for 38 years, their vaccines are prescribed to millions of people each year. You may wonder why perfectly healthy people are injected with a normally harmless bug whose strains mutate from year to year? Although flu vaccines can never be accurate, encouraged by their employers, millions of employees submit to a flu jab each year, trying to avoid the loss of working days. Online Pharmacy Watch: DEA Does Spring Cleaning Of Illegal Internet Pharmacies Since early 2004, it has become more apparent every day that the online pharmacy industry is being destroyed. Who is doing such damage to bring the industry crashing down, you ask? So far, the people responsible are savvy businessmen who are using their skills to create temporary safety nets for black-hat operations using loopholes in international security. Many pharmacy businesses were just shut down, and 20 people arrested during a DEA operation to stop the illegal sale and importation of controlled substances into the United States. I'd rather call these businesses drug rings than online pharmacies because many offered these medications of questionable quality without a prescription. Lunesta Memory Problems Lunesta may be the only sleeping pill that is FDA approved for long-term use, but it still has some of the same effects as other sleep aids. Ambien, Sonata and others have all been known to cause this problem. It can make life strange and difficult for some of us. Paxil Recall Lawyer Discusses Paxil Addiction Paxil went on the market in 1992 at the height of antidepressant drug popularity. It is a member of the class of antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs. The SSRI drugs revolutionized antidepressants because they have very few side effects and it is practically impossible to overdose on them. It makes sense not to prescribe a depressed person with pills they can easily overdose with. Though a latecomer to the SSRI market, Paxil grew successful very quickly by gaining FDA approval for very specific conditions like "social anxiety disorder" and "general anxiety disorder", which were very rare conditions at the time. In running add campaigns, Paxil encouraged people to try their drug if they'd experienced any general anxiety and, as can be expected, sales of Paxil soared. VIOXX Lawsuits Vioxx is a prescription medication that has been used primarily in the treatment of signs and symptoms of arthritis, but has also been prescribed to treat acute pain in adults and menstrual pain in women. It is a Cox-2 selective nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug or NSAID. Other Cox -2 selective NSAIDs on the market are Celebrex and Bextra. Vioxx is also related to nonselective NSAIDs such as ibuprofen and naproxen. Natural Vitamin E Combined with Vitamin C for Treatment of Alzheimers Disease Checklist of Treatments for Alzheimer's Disease Orthotics and Your Feet Orthotics are devices which fit into the shoe to aid the foot. "Functional orthotics" are rigid and designed to control motion and correct the function of the foot. Individuals with flatfeet, tendonitis, plantar fasciitis, certain foot deformities, knee, hip and back problems may benefit from functional orthotics. "Accommodative orthotics" are soft and designed to reduce pressure and prevent excess friction. Diabetics and those with a loss of sensation or circulation in their feet will benefit from accommodative orthotics. Both types of orthotics are custom made by taking a mold of the foot. Benefits of a Virtual Top Doctor Consultant Looking for the best doctor to suite your medical needs can be a problem, especially if you don't have time and you need to research the doctor's credentials. Whether you are in urgent need of help, or just need a second opinion, I will show you how to access all the information you need through the Internet's Virtual Top Doctor Consultant. 22 Inside Tips on How You Can Make Your Arthritis Medicines Work Twice as Effectively in Half the.. This report will give you 22 important tips to make sure that you are getting the very best out of your arthritis treatment program. Curing Lou Gehrigs Disease ALS is the disease that took the life of the famed baseball player. The disease benched Lou Gehrig from the game that he loved and later took his life. Now, ALS is referred to as the Lou Gehrig's disease. Today more than fifty years later there still is no cure for ALS. ALS is a motor neuron disease. ALS stands for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. The disease attacks nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. It attacks a persons muscles one at a time. Not unlike being tortured. Sadly there is no cure and no viable treatment. Army Report Validates Prediction of Vaccine-Induced Epidemic "The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it." - Joseph Mengele Do you suffer from Osteoarthritis? Here's how to tell! The most common type of arthritis is osteoarthritis (OA). This type of arthritis is commonly referred to as wear and tear arthritis or degenerative arthritis." 4 Reasons to Feel Safe Submitting an Electronic Medical Claim Electronic Medical Claim The Trouble with Tranqs There's a whole group of drugs out there called benzodiazepines.They are tranquillisers, or sedatives. They include such well-known names as Valium (diazepam), Ativan (lorazepam), Librium (chlordiazepoxide), Tranxene (clorazepate), Paxipam (halazepam), Centrax or Verstran (prazepam), Klonopin (clonazepam), Dalmane (flurazepam), Serax (oxazepam), Restoril (temazepam), Xanax (alprazolam), and Halcion (triazolam). Drugs like Librium and Valium have been around for a while, others such as Xanax are relative newcomers. Interestingly, whenever it appears, the newcomer is always hailed as a wonder drug as it becomes available for prescrption, until, 10 or 20 years later, the problems start to appear with those who were the first to be 'saved' from their pain by this miracle of pharmacological engineering. The P Value And Its Significance When diversifying an investment portfolio, one needs to consider investing in the healthcare industries. Pharmaceutical companies that have strong pipelines of investigation drugs have strong growth speculations. In addition to examining its pipelines, one also needs to be able to evaluate the results of its clinical trials. When a news program reports the results of a clinical trial for a new drug to be "statistically significant," what does it mean? And how did they come up with that conclusion? One of the most important values to look for when interpreting the results of a study is the P value. Phentermine Diet Pills: When Diet and Exercise Arent Enough To Help You Lose Weight Have you been struggling to lose weight, but diet and exercise aren't giving you the results you need to be healthy? Are you sick of people telling you that you could lose weight if only you had the will-power? It may be time to ask a physician about a phentermine prescription. Stevens Johnson Syndrome Lawyer Says: Get Help SJS is an allergic reaction to certain medications that can result in death. It has been linked to pain killers, antibiotics, barbiturates, anti-convulsants, non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs, arthritis medications, and sulfa antibiotics such as Bextra, Arava, Aventis, Remicade, Allopurinol, Phenytoin, Carbamazepine, Ibuprofen, Daypro, children's Motrin, Advil, Lamectal and Topamax. Stevens Johnson Syndrome reactions include inflammation of mucosal membranes (mouth, throat, eyes, genital tract, intestinal tract), skin burning, lesions, blisters and bleeding which can lead to infections, burning and soughing off of sheets of cells in the lungs, permanent blindness, dry eyes, photophobia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, permanent loss of nail beds, scarring of the mucosal membranes, arthritis, and chronic fatigue syndrome. Lotronex Lawyer: Lotronex Side Effects Lawsuit Even in clinical trials, Lotronex displayed a tendency towards causing ischemic colitis in patients. From the February in which Lotronex was approved until June, the FDA received seven reports of serious complications of constipation leading to hospitalization. Surgery was required to relieve some cases of extreme Lotronex constipation. Lotronex Medication Guides were issued under regulations that became effective in 1999 when Lotronex patients ended up in hospitalization and requiring surgical procedures for constipation. Since Lotronex is a drug used to treat diarrhea, these surgeries were obviously not necessary to treat conditions held before taking the drug. Warning! Flu Shots Can Be Dangerous To Your Health Every year about this time doctors around the world are recommending that people go in and get their annual flu shot. What most people don't know or understand is just how dangerous this could be, especially for children under the age of 12. When people call and say "My doctor is telling the family to go in and get a flu shot. Should I do it?"?I tell them they should learn about the side effects and decide for themselves?as a chiropractor and naturopathic physician I don't' have the time or energy to argue with family practitioners or family doctors who are obviously uneducated on the possible side effects or detrimental effects flu shots or vaccinations in general can have on the body. Substance Abuse Attitude Testing by a Standardized Survey This is a short overview of a questionnaire used for substance abuse attitude testing in testing a CREATE (Curriculum Renewal and Evaluation of Addiction Training and Education) effects on Medical Students. My afterthoughts on substance abuse attitude testing are in the end of the article.
|
| home | site map | |
© 2006 www.elearn-university.org |
