I wanna be sedated

Much like the classic “chicken or the egg” conundrum that has puzzled people for centuries, the order of medications and the diseases that are conveniently there to be cured has to be questioned. Each year, it seems as though there is a brand new “It” drug showing up in the crowded marketplace, usually heralded as a miracle for whatever the malady du jour happens to be. The pharmaceutical industry’s reasoning for this is far from a simple “we’re just people who like helping people.”

As often occurs, a sudden surge in diagnoses occurs for a relatively unknown or rarely seen illness. Amazingly, there is usually a newly patented cure just waiting in the wings. It is also sickeningly common

to see a huge upswing in how common an illness is. Although people have been coping with sleep loss for generations, it is partially due to so many new sleep medications advertised that more and more people

seem to have developed insomnia. Dr. Lawrence Diller, a psychiatrist who works with children in San Francisco, has written extensively about the troubling affect that insurance companies and drug companies have on the way doctors prescribe medication to children. It has been his experience that insurance companies reward doctors more for brief “med checks” than they do for actually having a long talking session with patients. Therefore, the doctors make more money prescribing drugs, along with the drug companies.

If one looks back over the pages of pharmacological innovation and medical diagnoses, you begin to notice several things. A key fact being that a whole heck of a lot of diseases simply did not exist until recent decades, along with their corresponding wonder pills. One major reason for some of these new medical discoveries is the rampant bedding down of the medical profession by big pharma. It shouldn’t be

news to anyone that doctors are lobbied by the drug makers to essentially help market new drugs. Anyone absorbing even a moderate amount of media has to notice all of the ads telling consumers to “ask your doctor if insert-swell-new-drug-here is right for you.” Interestingly, until the last five years, the United States was the only country where it was actually legal to advertise directly to the consumer.

Now it’s not to be said that any and all innovation in medicine is solely to benefit prescribers and suppliers; after all, doctors do take oaths to only do what helps the patients, but it is a troubling case that cannot be ignored. Prior to the last 20 years, it was virtually unheard of to have advertisements in consumer media. People would get sick, consult their healthcare provider, and the doctor would prescribe something that he felt was a possible cure.

Companies have been marketing drugs to doctors for years, which brings up questions about uncomfortable alliances, but up until recently the patient was left out of the equation. Then, largely due to shareholders’ desire for higher profits, we saw a troubling shift in marketing tactics. We began to see ads that told patients to ask their doctor to try medication. This is of very questionable ethics, since in many cases patients may not actually have the need for any medication. How many people went to their doctor asking about “the new purple pill,” without a clue as to what ailment was required to even necessitate its use? This particular pill was called Nexium, and nowhere in the large print was anything even mentioned about heartburn.

The constant pursuit of higher and higher profits for drug companies and the ways they have gone about achieving it has gradually bred a generation of manufactured hypochondriacs. Not everyone is easily duped into trying the latest drug, but it is too common for comfort. People need to fully understand the motivation behind new drugs that claim to be the cure for what they didn’t even know ailed them until they saw the flashy new ad telling them to hop on the “shiny, happy new you” bandwagon.

As consumers and patients, we need to demand that the reason we are diagnosed as ailing is not because a patent has expired and Pfizer’s stock holders need to buy a new yacht. We need to be able to trust that our

physicians are relying on their medical training and not which company is giving them the best kickbacks. As a patient, you need to be educated about all treatments available. Above all, we need to be going to see a doctor because of the symptoms we are experiencing, and not just because we have a coupon for a free two-week supply of a new drug. Be healthy. Be smart. Be warned.