How come we never hear anything bad about a prescription drug until l 100,000 people are killed from it?

Question

Phen Phen, Vioxx, Redux, the list goes on and on. Oh and a "doctor's" answer to treating a heroin addiction is with methadone. LOL! another addictive drug. This is what Anna-Nicole Smith died from. I believe her son died from it too.

They are more like doctors of death.

Answer 1

Good question. We don't hear about these drugs because the drug companies are powerful and keep it out of the news. Add to that, we have people in government that are on the take (some on the payroll, literally) to these drug companies. Also, doctors are nothing more than drug whores, dole out whatever to whomever without a care in the world.

What people need to do is make the media aware of problems, which is how much gets in the news, and keep verbalizing. Bottom line, we need to be advocates. The so called medical professionals are NOT on our side protecting us. In fact, we need someone protecting us from the medical profession...which should be the FDA, but as I said previously, many there are on the take. So that leaves us to take care of each other. Consumer beware!

Answer 2

I think it's not that the risks are unheard of, but that we underplay them because we assume it's from a safe source.

Medicine is supposed to heal, not hurt, so we skim over the "possible" side effects, thinking it only applies to others, much like cancer from smoking. We take it to get better, regardless of what it says because we don't internalize that potential harm.

We should have someone tell us the possible side effects in person, and what to watch out for, in detail. Knowledge is power with this.

As for heroin withdrawal it's pretty terrible(link below), methadone may be addictive but I doubt it's any moreso than heroin itself. However it removes a key element of heroin addiction problems, which is the street drug element. If you get it from a pharmacy for free, to help with heroin withdrawal, you won't be buying it from dealers on the street. It is said that the most dangerous part of heroin addiction is the crime element, and not the actual addiction, which although physically addictive is not that harmful to the body.

Heroin users after a while use more because they wish to stop the withdrawal symptoms, not because of the high, methadone stops the withdrawal symptoms and gives them an out. It also metabolizes differently, and makes it harder to get high on the drug.

So, methadone breaks the cycle of addiction, and thus helps people. It should not be villainized quite so much.

Answer 3

I know a lot of heroin addicts that say Methadone is worse than heroin, but the fact is, if they were willing to go cold turkey they wuoldn't be stuck on methadone.

The fact is millions of people take millions of pills each day - they help to improve quality of life for most, so we cant say they are all bad..... -and people have a choice.....and they had a choice to change habits that led them to need medications years before they ever needed them.

If you were to address five things, you could be rid of 90% of chronic disorders that require medical intervention. Those are:
We eat too much - and the wrong things
we drink too much
we smoke too much (or rather, we smoke at all)
we dont get enough excercise
we dont get enough sleep

So it is patients who dispense the behaviors which leave doctors with no other option than to dispense pills - because people want a pain med for arthritis instead of taking up excercise, they want to lower cholesterol and insist on eating hamburgers, they want to not make time to actually get to sleep, etc....

Ya cant have it both ways.....

Answer 4

The reason in simple. The big drug companies do enough testing to get the drug passed and get you the consumer to demand it. Methadone should only be used in conjunction with therapy or a drug program, and is only used to treat the withdrawl symptoms from Heroin.

Answer 5

for starters.....nowhere near 100K have died from any of the above. You'd better walk to work tomorrow instead of taking your car. Do you have any idea how many people died in cars last year?

Drugs, like cars, are a risk /benefit decision that is to be made by you and your doctor. And listen good when your pharmacist explains things to you.........like one just did.

Answer 6

Doctors "practice" medicine. Once I was told to go on a new type of drug, so I asked the doc "would you let your mother take this"? He hesitated. He said a lot, without saying a word.

Answer 7

because the deaths are what makes it a bad drug...