Drugs! Prescription drugs to be exact! They are essential to living just as water or food are. You may or may not know that prescription drugs are a very controversial topic in today’s society. Many concerns for consumers and producers can be given to shine a light on this disputable topic and there are needs to each. How much should a pill or other form of drug cost? What are the benefits that come with the currant prescription drugs? Is pizza Italian or American and will society ever make up their mind? Two of these questions will be covered and much more will hopefully be cleared up by the end. Every fact is backed by reputable sources and is cited in a correct manner. Now, who here has eaten food? Hopefully all of you or you would be dead. I’ll ask another question… who here has taken a prescription drug in their lifetime? Same amount right! That’s because prescription drugs are vital to your health and sometimes a home remedy of eating garlic on a cracker just doesn’t do it. Now I will show …show more content…
Producers work to formulate and distribute prescription drugs with diverted intentions. The authors GlaxoSmithKline state “…they turn these high prices into research toward new cures for diseases. It’s true, we in the U.S. seem to pick up most of the research tab for the rest of the world”. In this instance we get a tasteful sense that not all the money used for prescribed drugs are just baked into the profits. There stands a prodigious sum being flung into research and that may perhaps be a cause for the extraordinary drug costs. In the editorial, “The True Cost of Health Care”, “There is an estimated 800 billion put into disease research”. There is a gnawing realization that the medicinal companies pay for the research to discover more drug ingredients and cook up additional cures for these
It has been said that addiction is the plague of the 21st century. In an age of unprecedented life expectancy and medical breakthroughs, people are dying from both disease and overdose that are self inflicted and the cure is currently out of reach. Implementing progressive ideas such as safe injection sites have been a battle, both for caring social workers and front line emergency workers looking to minimize the health risks associated with risk taking behaviors that inevitably occur with intravenous drug use. While the addicted population currently uses considerable government funding by way of shelter services as well as prison and jail time, safe injection sites are a necessary step in the battle against drug abuse as is a major prevention
"In the past two decades or so, health care has been commercialized as never before, and professionalism in medicine seems to be giving way to entrepreneurialism," commented Arnold S. Relman, professor of medicine and social medicine at Harvard Medical School (Wekesser 66). This statement may have a great deal of bearing on reality. The tangled knot of insurers, physicians, drug companies, and hospitals that we call our health system are not as unselfish and focused on the patients' needs as people would like to think. Pharmaceutical companies are particularly ruthless, many of them spending millions of dollars per year to convince doctors to prescribe their drugs and to convince consumers that their specific brand of drug is needed in order to cure their ailments. For instance, they may present symptoms that are perfectly harmless, and lead potential citizens to believe that, because of these symptoms, they are "sick" and in need of medication. In some instances, the pharmaceutical industry in the United States misleads both the public and medical professionals by participating in acts of both deceptive marketing practices and bribery, and therefore does not act within the best interests of the consumers.
Stan Frinkelstein and Peter Temin believes that one solution is to eliminate the link between drug prices and drug discovery. This will help ease the fear of losing research funding for new medicine and by doing so, drug prices should be a lot more reasonable. The next solution they have is to undo the blockbuster mentality and this is closely linked to eliminating the link between drug prices and drug discovery. Blockbuster refers to pharmaceutical companies that achieve an annual worldwide sale of $1 billion or more. They can achieve this because the drugs are used by many patients and/or used for a long period of time. This will solve the drug price crisis because by doing so, researchers can focus more on society’s needs instead of focusing on how to generate more revenue. Their solutions will help researchers develop drugs that society truly
In America, it has become a battle to earn a high paying job to cope with the expenses of a typical American. It has become even more of a battle for some people to afford medical prescriptions to keep healthy. Health becomes a crucial issue when discussed among people. No matter what, at one point or another, everyone is going to stand as a victim of the pharmaceutical industry. The bottom line is Americans are paying excessive amounts of money for medical prescriptions. Health-Care spending in the U.S. rose a stunning 9.3% in 2002, which is the greatest increase for the past eleven years. (Steele 46) Many pharmaceutical companies are robbing their clients by charging extreme rates for their products.
Almost everybody on Long Island, and probably all around the world, has been prescribed a drug by a doctor before— whether it was to knock out a nasty virus, or relieve pain post injury or surgery. However, what many people don’t realize is that these drugs can have highly addictive qualities, and more and more people are becoming hooked, specifically teenagers. But when does harmlessly taking a prescription drug to alleviate pain take the turn into the downward spiral of abuse? The answer to that question would be when the user begins taking the drug for the “high” or good feelings brought along with it—certainly not what it was prescribed for (1). The amount of teens that abuse prescription medications has been rapidly increasing in recent
Now is not the time for the United States federal government to decriminalize or legalize illegal drugs, including marijuana. However, nor can the government continue to do nothing about the financially, economically, and socially expensive domestic drug policy it currently follows. The United States Congress should pass legislation to remove mandatory minimum penalties from drug offenses, and the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Prisons should add in-house rehabilitation programs for its incarcerated drug offenders. These policies would increase the cost-effectiveness of current drug policy and reduce crime and drug use, and do not face the political obstacles or have the uncertain consequences of decriminalizing or legalizing drugs.
The time and cost it takes to put a drug through the trials as well as the FDA’s regulations make the rarely successful process a huge commitment for these drug companies. Next, the author compares the cost of drugs to the amount of lawsuits the companies receive. There are many risks to mass-producing drugs and with the FDA siding with Public Safety, the author states that drug companies can lose a lot of money. This is because the FDA is not willing to take any risks in approving drugs due to the repercussions being so severe, The final idea the author discusses is the process of research itself. The drug companies revenue is put towards developing new drugs that will help the public. This can be a very costly process which is why a lot of money is needed to support the research. Epstein’s purpose in writing this article is to defend the rising costs of pharmaceutical drugs in order to get people to understand the drug companies point of view and contributions to society. This article can be considered credible because it comes from Opposing Viewpoints in Context. This is a very reliable database for gathering
A newly employed critical care nurse was just about to finish a 12 hour night shift when she realized she had one more patient to administer medication to. It was the busiest Friday night shift she has ever worked due to poor nurse-patient ratio, and the workload felt impossible. She gave her last patient the properly prescribed medication, but failed to notice that the physician hastily wrote an updated dosage for a high risk medication, Digoxin. The patient’s heart rate began to slow down and life-saving procedures had to be activated. Medication errors are “any preventable event that may cause, or lead, to inappropriate medication use or patient harm while the medication is in the control of the health care professional, patient, or consumer
As I’m sure you would agree, doctors have to stop over prescribing their patients with opioids. Although opioids are used as pain medication and are prescribed more to patients who are fresh out of surgery or have chronic pain, it can become highly addictive. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, about 11.5 million people have misused the opioids they were prescribed(Thompson). Their misuse can be due to the fact that their doctors are prescribing them a ridiculous amount of opioids, instead of just giving them regular ibuprofen. It doesn’t matter how well these drugs are working, what matters is how it’s affecting the patients who are given this deadly drug. Clearly doctors aren’t taking into consideration at all the
The use of drugs is often correlated to happiness but can one truly achieve true happiness through them. The book “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley is about a “utopian” future where their society is conditioned and genetically modified. They are taught they all belong to each other. In this society one must take soma to feel no emotion because it helps stabilize their world. Also it is used to keep them happy. Many people in today's world also use drugs to keep them happy and as an escape. While many rely on drugs to maintain a happy life one will never be able to find true happiness.
All opioids are highly addictive and dangerous to give to anyone in any type of pain. The promotion of them should be outlawed and the sales restricted and regulated across the United States to those who really need them. Extensive research can conclude that this epidemic is fast growing and effects people from all walks of life. This being every race, gender and age throughout all fifty states, making this problem extremely difficult and unable to isolate toa certain demographic group. These drugs are being prescribed for all types of pain ranging from a simple cavity repair to something as complex as brain cancer. This diversity must be stopped if there is going to be any progress to resolve this problem affecting more than 1 in 3 Americans in 2015 alone. For those currently using opioids it can be very difficult to stop, and that is why so many people are still using. Even if sobered before, there is a very high percentage for relapsing. So the only real solution to see results is to completely outlaw the promotion of opioids, lowering the problem of addiction
When people go to their doctors, they trust that these medical professionals have the knowledge necessary to prescribe a medication that will have no harmful interactions with any current medications or have any dangerous side effects that will cause more harm than help. People don’t pick up drugs that they find sitting on the side of the street and just start taking them without knowing exactly what they are putting into their bodies; however it is a frightening reality that people are unknowingly ingesting unknown pharmaceuticals in their drinking water. Nearly seventy percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug, and more than half take two, according to Mayo Clinic and Olmsted Medical Center researchers (Nearly 7 in 10 Americans).
Prescription drugs are killing more and more Americans every day by the thousands.Study shows that the number of deaths is rising dramatically because, of confusion, misuse,and abusing the prescription drugs.So due to all of the deaths caused by overdosing on prescription drugs, are they really helping in the medical field? And if so, why are doctors still prescribing these drugs if they know so many people overdose on them?
It is deadlier than car crashes and gun homicides combined, and it continues to grow every day, it is drug overdoses. America is being swallowed with addiction and overdoses pill by pill. America currently is in an opioid crisis that only grows every day. The problem is that users begin to misuse the drug, leading to addiction. Patients have easy access to opioids which makes drug abuse and overdose more likely. Many users are claimed by the drug's addictiveness and fall to overdose. The pharmaceutical industry and government have given little support to help fight the epidemic. Opioids will be and continue to be an epidemic if America does not intervene and solve the issue.
Specific Purpose: To inform my audience about the dangers of prescription drugs when not taken as prescribed by your physician or pharmacist.