In 1999, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a painkiller for osteoarthritis called Vioxx. The documentary Prescription for Disaster covers the negative side effects of this drug and how it impacted people who took it. Almost immediately after the FDA approved the drug, its side effects became apparent. Patients that took Vioxx developed heart problems and stroke that, many times, resulted in death. It is estimates that of the 88,000 Americans that had heart attacks caused by Vioxx, 38,000 of them died. The effects of Vioxx were both short term and long term. Although Merck refused to admit to that the drug had effects if taken for less than 18 months, Vioxx was eventually taken off shelves. Vioxx brings light to important issues …show more content…
The Prescription for Disaster is written, directed, produced, and hosted by Gary Null. Gary Null received an associate’s degree in business administration. His alma mater is a Mountain State, a 2-year college. He later goes to Union Institute and University for his Ph.D. in human nutrition , but he still does not have enough education or experience to speak on medical drugs compared to others in this field. He offers valid issues in the pharmaceutical industry, but most of his complaints are exaggerated and generalized to all in the medical field. The extreme bias of the Prescription for Disaster puts the validity of this documentary into …show more content…
There is then a change in the theme of the documentary. It transitions into a documentary about the negative effects of medical drugs. Gary Null and other “experts” focus on malpractice by doctors. They provide examples such as Alan Yuko’s. The bias in the tone of the parents of baby Yurko, who died of shaken baby syndrome, and the experts involved in the trial is clear. They claim the medical system forces kids to have vaccines. The documentary then focuses on the effects of other diseases. It offers an alternative to drugs– nutrients. The people interviewed ignore the effects of disease, and blame the deaths on only the
The painkiller Vioxx was introduced in 1999 by Merck & Co. It has been used by over 20 million Americans since it was put on the market. Vioxx remained on the market for approximately five years without adequate warnings about its risks. In September of 2004, Merck took Vioxx off the market after a study revealed that it doubled the risk of heart attack or stroke for patients that used it for more than 18 months. Although Merck claimed that they had no idea of these possibly lethal side effects, some internal documents imply that they had been aware of the problem for years and had not made moves to change it. Over 300 lawsuits have been filed against Merck, and it is expected that thousands more will arise.
Terrence Ackerman, “Why Doctors Should Intervene,” Hastings Center Report, vol. 12, no. 4 (Aug 1982): 14-17
Dr. John Abramson’s book Overdosed America debunks the myths about the excellence of American medicine. Abramson backs up this claim by closely examining research about medicine, closely examining the unpublished details submitted by drug manufacturers to the FDA, and discovering that the unpublished data does not coincide with the claims made about the safety and effectiveness of commonly used medicines. Abramsons purpose is to point out the flaws of the pharmaceutical industry in order to warn the readers about the credibility of the drugs they are buying. Given the critical yet technical language of the book, Abramson is writing to an audience that may include academic physicians as well as those who want to learn about the corruption of the pharmaceutical industry.
In Melody Peterson’s “Our Daily Meds” , the history of marketing and advertising in the pharmaceutical industry is explored. The first chapter of the book, entitled “Creating disease”, focuses on how major pharmaceutical companies successfully create new ailments that members of the public believe exist. According to Peterson, the success that these drug manufacturers have experienced can be attributed to the malleability of disease, the use of influencial people to promote new drugs, the marketing behind pills, and the use of media outlets.
"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 is 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.
The documentary states that over 27,000 deaths a year are due to overdose from heroin and other opioids. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in 2015 prescription pain relievers account for 20,101 overdose deaths, and 12,990 overdose deaths are related to heroin (Rudd et al., 2010-2015). The documentary’s investigation gives the history of how the heroin epidemic started, with a great focus on the hospice movement. We are presented with the idea that once someone is addicted to painkillers, the difficulty in obtaining the drug over a long period of time becomes too expensive and too difficult. This often leads people to use heroin. This idea is true as a 2014 survey found that 94% of respondents who were being treated for opioid addiction said they chose to use heroin because prescription opioids were “more expensive and harder to obtain (Cicero et al., 2014).” Four in five heroin users actually started out using prescription painkillers (Johns, 2013). This correlation between heroin and prescription painkiller use supports the idea presented in the documentary that “prescription opiates are heroin prep school.”
In 1906, the Pure Food and Drug Act, that was years in the making was finally passed under President Roosevelt. This law reflected a sea change in medicine-- an unprecedented wave of regulations. No longer could drug companies have a secret formula and hide potentially toxic substances such as heroin under their patent. The law required drug companies to specify the ingredients of medications on the label. It also regulated the purity and dosage of substances. Not by mere coincidence was the law passed only about five years after Bayer, a German based drug company began selling the morphine derivative, heroin. Thought to be a safe, non-habit forming alternative to morphine, heroin quickly became the “cure-all drug” that was used to treat anything from coughs to restlessness. Yet, just as quickly as it became a household staple, many began to question the innocence of the substance. While the 1906 law had inherent weaknesses, it signaled the beginning of the end for “cure-all” drugs, such as opiate-filled “soothing syrups” that were used for infants. By tracing and evaluating various reports by doctors and investigative journalists on the medical use of heroin, it is clear that the desire for this legislative measure developed from an offshoot in the medical community-- a transformation that took doctors out from behind the curtain, and brought the public into a new era of awareness.
The United States of America accounts for only 5% of the world’s population, yet as a nation, we devour over 50% of the world’s pharmaceutical medication and around 80% of the world’s prescription narcotics (American Addict). The increasing demand for prescription medication in America has evoked a national health crisis in which the government and big business benefit at the expense of the American public.
In Melody Peterson’s “Our Daily Meds” , the history of marketing and advertising in the pharmaceutical industry is explored. The first chapter of the book, entitled “Creating disease”, focuses on how major pharmaceutical companies successfully create new ailments that members of the public believe exist. According to Peterson, the success that these drug manufacturers have experienced can be attributed to the malleability of disease, the use of influencial people to promote new drugs and the efficient usage of media outlets.
The film used outside sources like journalists and politicians to give statistics. This appeal to logic doesn’t help me accredit them because they use opinions to state an argument instead of data. When these self-proclaimed ‘experts’ are less than qualified with their professional experiences, they can pretty much say anything that they want, and we will believe them because they’re professionals and we trust that they are experts, when they don’t have a clue. Therefore, I believe that these professionals pick and choose what they can and cannot speak about. It would help if they were honest and clearer about their experience. The consequence of not being clear about their qualifications and standpoints is that the public mostly cannot know who is speaking sense and who is speaking gibberish. With such a dilemma in the United States we need people who are trustworthy; professionals that have the clinical experience and people who show that they’ve done their research, people who are
Kaufman, Stephen. "Obama Drug Strategy: Prevention to Reduce Demand." America - Engaging the World - America.gov. 12 May 2010. Web. 02 Mar. 2011. .
By the year 2000 opioid medicine containing oxycodone etc., are being abused and misused and more than doubled in 10 years’ time.
Many people throughout the world visit the United States every year to receive medical treatment. This is due to our excellent pharmaceutical industry as it spends million of dollars and many hours of research to come up with what we can only describe as “miracle” drugs and treatments. Part of the success of many of these medications is because the pharmaceutical industry is highly regulated by policies that protect the public from accessing drugs that have not been fully tested and found to be “safe”. However, this was not the case until the late 1990s and early 2000s. One time in history that highly influenced the strict regulations we currently have was the nationwide contamination of patients through blood transfusion or by consuming medications
This book takes place in the late 1960's. While reading it, I totally forgot that it wasn't 2017 and I was so confused as to why the so called doctors would be treating children like this. The treatments they use I never thought that they could actually be done on a human, let alone a child, like the shock therapy or drilling a screw into someone's
Wolf, M. (2011, June 4). We should declare an end to our disastrous war on drugs. Financial Times. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.proxy.consortiumlibrary.org/docview/870200965?accountid=14473