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Quotes about New Drugs from the world's top natural health / natural living authors

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"Joy and her rheumatologist often discuss new drugs coming down the pike that might be helpful in lupus—a disease for which no new drug has been approved for forty years—but clinical trials are only now in the works, and the potential health risks and side effects of the new drugs are far from known. "My doctor told me that if I were an older patient he might try me on a new drug that's being tested in clinical trials in lupus patients, like Rituxan," Joy says. "But I'm a young mom, and the jury on these drugs isn't yet in and it isn't going to be in for years." - Donna Jackson Nakazawa, The Autoimmune Epidemic (Get the book.)

"New theories beget new drugs to treat diabetes, high blood pressure, and cholesterol; new treatments and procedures to ameliorate chronic diseases; and new diets organized around each new theory's elevation of one class of nutrient and demotion of another. Much lip service is paid to the importance of prevention, but the health care industry, being an industry, stands to profit more handsomely from new drugs and procedures to treat chronic diseases than it does from a wholesale change in the way people eat. Cynical? Perhaps." - Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto (Get the book.)

"Joy and her rheumatologist often discuss new drugs coming down the pike that might be helpful in lupus—a disease for which no new drug has been approved for forty years—but clinical trials are only now in the works, and the potential health risks and side effects of the new drugs are far from known. "My doctor told me that if I were an older patient he might try me on a new drug that's being tested in clinical trials in lupus patients, like Rituxan," Joy says. "But I'm a young mom, and the jury on these drugs isn't yet in and it isn't going to be in for years." - Donna Jackson Nakazawa, The Autoimmune Epidemic (Get the book.)

"I think approval of this drug will act as a major incentive for other drug companies looking for new markets for new drugs. Nonmalignant pain and fatigue are finally coming into the purview of the pharmaceutical industry. However, drug companies are notoriously secretive about discussing their ideas for treating any disease because of patent issues and their chances of giving leads to another company. It's hard for anyone, including researchers like me, to know what other drugs are already in trials, but the two Web sites listed here may tip you off to new and early studies." - Benjamin H. Natelson, M.D., Your Symptoms Are Real: What to Do When Your Doctor Says Nothing Is Wrong (Get the book.)

"If researchers are able to demonstrate that the same genetic defect found in the mouse model also creates susceptibility in human lupus, it might open ways to block the disease by developing new drugs that block the activation of a defective Lyl08 gene. In a separate lupus study from UT Southwestern, researchers describe the role of a mutated gene called Tlr7, which interacts with Lyl08 in triggering lupus by causing another component of the immune system to malfunction. The gene turns out to affect the body's ability to alert the immune system to an invading germ." - Donna Jackson Nakazawa, The Autoimmune Epidemic (Get the book.)

"Overnight, it seemed, almost all patients were converted to these new drugs, as well as new-generation antidepressants and mood stabilizers. It was not at all unusual for my clients to be taking three, four, five, or six different types of psychiatric drugs in a given day—a combination not unlike the number of street drugs many of them had once been addicted to. I am not a psychiatrist. My job was first as a counselor at, and then director of, a number of clinical and residential programs, and finally as a senior administrator at social services agencies and a researcher at medical schools." - Charles Barber, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation (Get the book.) "The last critical factor—and here the SSRIs influenced the change as much as they were affected by the change—was that the new drugs arrived at just about the time the big drug companies were pursuing marketing and profitability above all other concerns. In other words, the antidepressants came along at the moment when the drug industry was transforming itself into Big Pharma. In the 1970s and 1980s, the profitability of Fortune 500 drug companies was double the median for all industries in the Fortune 500." - Charles Barber, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation (Get the book.)

"These new drugs target incretins (which we explain below) and include glucagon-like peptide and dipeptidyl peptidase inhibitors. INCRETIN MIMETICS AND DIPEPTIDYL PEPTIDASE INHIBITORS Although you may be tempted to skip this section because the drug categories appear esoteric and/or arcane, we urge you to read and become knowledgeable about these drugs so that you can become fully involved in treatment decisions made with your physician." - Steven V. Joyal, What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Diabetes: An Innovative Program to Prevent, Treat, and Beat This Controllable Disease (Get the book.)

"Many of the new drugs are actually developed not at the big drug companies but at universities, small biotech firms, and the National Institutes of Health. Big Pharma has instead cast its lot with the pharmaceutical equivalent of picking low-hanging fruit. In recent years, the industry giants have largely gone in for producing what are called "me-too" drugs, slight variants on existing blockbuster medications, rather than searching for something truly new." - Charles Barber, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation (Get the book.)

"Very little, it would seem. Most new drugs are so-called me-too, meaning that they are chemical variations of existing drugs. For example, with its patent for Prozac about to lapse, Eli Lilly became quite creative. It renamed Prozac to Sarafem, colored it pink, and got FDA approval to market it for "premenstrual disphoric disorder" (PMDD). "Same drug, same dose, but priced three and a half times higher than generic Prozac."50 Of the 78 drugs approved by the FDA in 2002, only 17 contained new ingredients, and only seven were classified by the FDA as improvements over existing drugs." - Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea, What If Medicine Disappeared? (Get the book.)

"So burdensome has this become that 8 of 10 doctors surveyed in 2006 favored a moratorium on DTC advertising for new drugs.95 One enterprising study arranged for trained actors to make appointments with doctors, act as if they were depressed, and then ask the doctor for an antidepressant. When the depressed actors requested a specific brand, doctors wrote a prescription for that brand 50 percent of the time. When the actors asked for any antidepressant, they were given a prescription three-quarters of the time." - Charles Barber, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation (Get the book.)

"The current focus of medicine is to use high-tech approaches to develop new drugs and medical procedures. Despite the benefit for patients, this approach leads to a problem: some of the lower-tech means of treating patients—the art of medicine that allows the doctor to hear the patient—fall by the wayside. This problem is due not only to high-tech ways of developing new medical treatments, but also to decisions about what medical insurance will cover, and for how much money." - Benjamin H. Natelson, M.D., Your Symptoms Are Real: What to Do When Your Doctor Says Nothing Is Wrong (Get the book.)

"FDA only reviews about 25 new drugs a year, a professional staff of 1,500 doctors, scientists, toxicologists, and statisticians are assigned to review the results of studies normally conducted by the manufacturer on approximately 25 new drugs. Yet they allot a staff of only five doctors and one epidemiologist to monitor the safety of more than 3,000 drugs already approved, and being prescribed for millions of patients!" - Dr. David W. Tanton; Ph.D., A Drug-Free Approach To Healthcare, Revised Edition (Get the book.)

"The pharmaceutical industry realizes that pain is a huge market, and the value of the drugs in this class in relieving FM pain has spurred other companies to work on developing new drugs. You, the consumer, will benefit from this change in attention. Moreover, the development of drugs specifically to relieve FM will at last revolutionize the way physicians think of the syndrome. As we saw with IBS, when treatments exist that really work, skeptics can no longer argue that the problem is "all in your head." - Benjamin H. Natelson, M.D., Your Symptoms Are Real: What to Do When Your Doctor Says Nothing Is Wrong (Get the book.)

"THE INFAMOUS WESBECKER CASE IN MY ROLE AS MEDICAL EXPERT for the combined Prozac cases, I interviewed FDA officials about how they approve new drugs and in particular about problems involved with Prozac during the approval process. I studied federal regulations governing the FDA, and took intensive seminars intended for drug company officials concerning the operations of the FDA and the procedures for obtaining drug approval. I located and then reviewed hundreds of published studies concerning Prozac, especially how it causes adverse effects." - Peter Breggin, Medication Madness: A Psychiatrist Exposes the Dangers of Mood-Altering Medications (Get the book.)

"Hormone Replacement Therapy We would like to think that the development of new drugs follows a prudent and rational procedure: that research protocols are carefully designed and evaluated, and that decisions about dosage and use are evidence-based, so that ultimately such drugs are both safe and effective. Unfortunately, when Fran studied the estrogen replacement controversy,29 she found something very different." - Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea, What If Medicine Disappeared? (Get the book.)

"So minimal, the editorial said, that 500 such people would have to be treated for one full year with the new drugs instead of the older anti-inflammatory drugs to prevent just one serious but nonfatal stomach ulcer. Based on the difference in price between the new and older anti-inflammatory drugs, the editorial calculated that the cost of each serious ulcer thus prevented was $400,000." - John Abramson, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.) (Get the book.)

"Placebos, whether handed out in a clinic to pacify annoying patients or used in trials to test new drugs, were identified by critics with the most patronizing and ethically fraught face of mainstream medicine.57 A lot would have to change before something that was once seen as disempowering patients could be perceived as the key to treatments that might actually empower them. In the meantime, the medicalization of positive-thinking ideas proceeded on other fronts." - Anne Harrington, The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine (Get the book.)

"The mortality rate from AIDS in the developed countries has gone way down as new drugs have been developed that control HIV infection. Gleevac is a true miracle of modern medical science. This treatment for a slow-acting form of leukemia (chronic myelogenous leukemia) specifcally blocks the body's production of an enzyme that causes white blood cells to become malignant. (Unfortunately it's priced at $25,000 per year of treatment." - John Abramson, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.) (Get the book.)

"There are dozens more new drugs in hundreds of different dosage forms, and thousands of side effects. Over the years, public understanding of behavior disorders—particularly, attention deficit disorder (ADD) and the hyperactive variation (ADHD)—steadily grew through wider media coverage and the availability of resources on the disorder. My understanding of attention-deficit issues grew not so much from reading but from watching children get into trouble at school, lose friends, and miss out on invitations to birthday parties." - Jay Gordon, The ADD and ADHD Cure: The Natural Way to Treat Hyperactivity and Refocus Your Child (Get the book.)

"Genetic reprogramming will offer new treatments for otherwise incurable hereditary diseases, as well as new drugs, new foods, new insecticides, and so on. Yet, at the same time as we push ahead toward greater technological brilliance, the dangers of misapplying our awesome powers are also becoming increasingly apparent. Planet Earth is suffering badly from the impact of our waste. Its mineral and biological resources have been plundered. Its delicately balanced climate is being disturbed—perhaps irreversibly." - Peter Russell, Waking Up In Time: Finding Inner Peace In Times of Accelerating Change (Get the book.)

"In contrast to what we have been led to believe about the "new and improved" effectiveness of SSRI's, it turned out that there was virtuady no difference between these new drugs and the older tricyclic drug used as the comparator: 40.7% symptom reduction for the new drugs versus 41.7% for the comparator. Even worse, placebos were 30.9 % effective, which means that there is a negligible statistical difference between these new drugs and a sugar pdl. Does a 10 % difference justify the advertising hoopla ? Wolfgang Fleischhacker et al." - Helke Ferrie, Dispatches From the War Zone of Environmental Health (Get the book.)

"Ethics Because of the difference in response characteristic between drugs and nutrients, a valid RCT for a nutrient requires that the control group be placed on an inadequate intake. With new drugs, one can always summon equipoise. One does not know, in advance, whether the agent being tested will confer any net benefit; and it is not, in fact, a deprivation to be "deprived" of a drug that is ineffective. But that posture is never possible for nutrients." - Ann M. Coulston and Carol J. Boushey, Nutrition in the Prevention and Treatment of Disease (Get the book.)

"Most clinical tests on new drugs are financed by the pharmaceutical industry, and nearly all information supplied to doctors about the products' effects and benefits comes from the drug companies. An investigation conducted by respected scientists, including four Nobel Laureates, found that clinical tests on new drugs are highly scandalous. When the FDA made spot checks on these tests, it discovered that 20 percent of the involved researchers used highly irregular practices, such as applying the wrong doses of drugs and/or forging documents." - Andreas Moritz, Timeless Secrets of Health & Rejuvenation: Unleash The Natural Healing Power That Lies Dormant Within You (Get the book.)

"With increased training in the 'allied sciences' of medicine, doctors considered themselves uniquely well able to evaluate mesmerism, galvanism, new drugs, the use of the stethoscope, and myriad other medical innovations of indeterminate worth—including acupuncture—and gathered together to do so in precisely these settings. Thus, although periodicals were a crucial mechanism by which to propagate a new technique, they were far from the only one." - Roberta Bivins, Alternative Medicine?: A History (Get the book.)

"As I alluded to above, the fact that more studies didn't show that "old drugs" are better than new drugs is probably related to the fact that beta-blockers and diuretics were lumped together, a policy based more on marketing strategy than on science. The fact that beta-blockers may have dragged down diuretics is supported by studies like the Anglo-Scandinavian Cardiac Outcomes Trial Blood Pressure Lowering Arm (ASCOT-BPLA), in which 19,257 patients with high blood pressure and risk factors for heart disease were randomized to the calcium channel blocker amlodipine vs. the beta-blocker atenolol." - J. Douglas Bremner, Before You Take that Pill: Why the Drug Industry May Be Bad for Your Health (Get the book.) "Sometimes new drugs are found to have side effects that are far more dangerous than those of the older alternatives, but typically when this happens, companies resist admitting it for as long as possible. For instance, the painkiller Vioxx was a second-generation drug that was never shown to be a more effective pain reliever than the old painkiller, Advil, which could be purchased for a fraction of what Vioxx cost and over the counter. However, Vioxx was marketed as having a lower risk of gastrointestinal bleeding." - J. Douglas Bremner, Before You Take that Pill: Why the Drug Industry May Be Bad for Your Health (Get the book.) "The truth is, most new drugs are developed through basic science research conducted in universities and not in drug-company laboratories. University scientists receive research grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NIH is supported by money from taxes. Take the case of the COX-2 inhibitors, like Vioxx. The mechanisms of COX-2 inhibition that led to the development of the COX-2 inhibitors were discovered at a university by researchers supported by taxpayers' dollars." - J. Douglas Bremner, Before You Take that Pill: Why the Drug Industry May Be Bad for Your Health (Get the book.) "New breakthroughs in medicine are bringing new drugs to the market every day. The American medical system will soon eliminate disease and discomfort and allow us to live a hundred years. Right? Not exactly. In fact, one hundred thousand Americans die every year from medications that they didn't need or that were prescribed in the wrong way. A million people have serious side effects that require hospitalization. Doctors don't always have all the information they need to balance the risks and benefits of medication." - J. Douglas Bremner, Before You Take that Pill: Why the Drug Industry May Be Bad for Your Health (Get the book.)

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