I’m not quite sure where to go with this. Each week I flip through dozens of medical articles in an attempt to find one or two interesting health care developments you may not have read about. This week, I found myself tossing one article after another into a stack I mentally labeled “greed and its […]
Category: Big Pharma Evils
Are Generic Drugs Different? You Bet!
Posted 05/19/2014 Bob lay wide awake at 2 AM, wondering if he’d even taken his Ambien. Melissa’s hands and feet felt cold and she was losing hair. She knew these underactive thyroid symptoms well and quickly scheduled an appointment to ask about increasing what she thought was her Synthroid prescription. Despite enjoying a relatively calm […]
“Take These Pills Or You’ll Die!”
Six months ago, while visiting my 90-year-old Fox News/Don Imus devotee aunt in Florida, I was working out at the local health club and got into a conversation with a lean, muscular older guy who’d just finished his bench presses. I bemoaned the fact that there was so little to do in that part of […]
Big Pharma Controls Your Doctor’s Brain
Two themes this week. First, on the very same morning I sent out last week’s Health Tip expressing my dismay at an Annals of Internal Medicine article and editorial advising physicians to discourage patients from using multiple vitamins a new study from Germany showed that vitamin D deficiency was strongly linked to fatal heart attacks […]
JAMA Reports Bribing Your Doc Could Improve Care (You Might Not Want These Details)
Two separate articles appeared this week in JAMA (the Journal of the American Medical Association) reporting that financial incentives either to individual physicians or group practices might improve the overall quality of care delivered to patients. I guess it’s human nature, especially viewed through the eyes of a lifetime Chicagoan like myself, to think, “Well […]
Chronicle of a Death
A very disturbing article, the likes of which I’ve never read in all my years as a physician, appeared in a recent issue of the AMA’s Archives of Internal Medicine. Written by Neil Holtzman, MD, a Johns Hopkins-based pediatrician, it describes the circumstances surrounding the untimely death of his beloved wife of many years, Barbara […]
Six Commonly Missed Diagnoses +1: Rx Drug Side Effects
Posted 01/25/2012 I’d planned a series of six commonly missed diagnoses, but today I have one more, a life-threatening addition you’ll want to add to your mental list. If you’ve been following this series you know we’ve covered low levels of vitamin B-12 and vitamin D, subtly underactive thyroid, gluten sensitivity, intestinal parasites, and candida […]
Medicine’s Latest Step Backwards
Posted 10/17/2011 “Vitamins linked to higher odds of early death in older women,” the headlines screamed last week. I finished an anxious call from my 88-year-old Aunt Hildy. Once peacefully ensconced in her Florida condo, now, after seeing a TV news report that vitamins were dangerous when used by women over 62, Hildy was eyeing […]
More Sleaze from Big Pharma
I can appreciate you might be fatigued with this topic, but let’s face it: for virtually everyone, health care today means going to the doctor and coming home with a prescription.
Europe Bamboozled by Big Pharma, Part 2
Last week we talked about the new European Union laws banning hundreds of herbal remedies. Since a favorite saying of many Europeans is “The problem with you Americans is…” I feel no compunction giving you my opinions about the entire continent getting itself so thoroughly blindsided by corporate-political footsies.
Europe Bamboozled By Big Pharma
Stories like the one I’m going to tell you this week and next make me proud to be a Chicagoan. Nobel prize winning Chicago author Saul Bellow said that we reside in the “contempt center of the USA” and, you know, I’ve got to agree. We take to such chicanery as well-placed bribes, cronyism, no-bid contracts, and politicians hay-tumbling with big corporations as naturally as naive folk worldwide take to breathing.
Is There A Wonder Drug in Our Midst?
For better or for worse, virtually all prescription drugs must be officially approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), an immense bureaucracy that regulates the vast segment of our economy that the words “food” and “drugs” imply.
Hypnotized by Big Pharma
Virtually every day, a fax arrives asking me to participate in one market research study or another on some medical issue related to Big Pharma. If I happen to be interested, I call a phone number, am asked a few questions to determine if I qualify (they especially like primary care doctors), and am scheduled for an appointment. Sometimes I arrive and there’s a group of doctors, sometimes it’s a one-on-one.
Big Pharma, Bad Medicine
Great title. Too bad it’s not my original, but this link will take you to the current issue of the Boston Review, and figuring we don’t see much of this magazine in Chicago, I’ll summarize its key points and hope (if you care a smidgen about your well-being) you’ll then read as much as you can endure without screaming.
Poisoned by an Antibiotic
Although he was only in his early thirties, he moved like an old man with widespread arthritis. At the stairs, he supported himself on the short banister to keep his full weight off his feet. It looked as if every one of his muscles were in pain.
Help for Your Fading Sex Drive
In last week’s health tip, I talked about Big Pharma’s predilection for creating illnesses to fit new chemicals, and how the controversial hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD) was a “perfect match” for a failed antidepressant called flibanserin.
Your Sex Drive, the FDA, and Big Pharma
Strange trio, right? But keep this health tip in mind a few months from now when you’re watching a sexually charged TV commercial for a (yet unnamed) prescription libido enhancer as your wonder “Didn’t I read about this somewhere?”
Mayo Clinic Sells Its Soul
Click here for the Health Tip link. The moment I saw the title of the “research” article comparing the effectiveness of the non-generic statin Lipitor to the generic version of the statin Zocor on the cover of Mayo Clinic Proceedings, I knew its conclusion without reading it. My first thought had to do with the […]
Crestor: To Take or Not To Take
Click here for the Health Tip link. When drug research like the recent Crestor study makes headlines in the Chicago Sun-Times and the national media, I know I’ll be fielding questions from patients. The very day after the Crestor study, in fact, the perky Crestor drug reps arrived in my office, barely able to contain […]
Pre-diabetes Prescription Drugs
Click here for the Health Tip link. Q: My doctor told me I need to take drugs for something he calls pre-diabetes. After reading your tips on the pharmaceutical industry, can you give me any advice on whether or not I need to take them? A That’s a great question because it exemplifies how doctors […]