Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Drugs the American Way
I just got back from a fairly routine trip to the pharmacy to pick up prescriptions and stock up on items we use on a regular basis. One of those things is an item called leg cramps, which should be fairly evident what it is for just from the name. The shelf was bare of this product, which has happened once in awhile in the past so I was not excited or agitated. When I got to the check out counter, I requested they have someone check the back room to see if they had any, as we were running a bit lot and my Mother as a general rule needs this nightly to avoid waking up with leg cramps, staying up most of the rest of the night. (actually it is a bit more than that as usually she groans, Dad then wakes up and yells for me to come help her, which of course there is nothing I can really do but either bring her the medication or commiserate.. thus every one's sleep is disturbed.)
I was informed by my friendly pharmacy staff, that this product had been pulled from the shelves per the FDA and they showed me an article from a newspaper that said the FDA has ordered pulling all products that contain quinine from the market unless you have malaria, in which case there is only one product that is approved. Well, we don't happen to have malaria, (under normal circumstances this would be a good thing) so we are just sol (sorry out of luck)
This is reminiscent of another product from many years ago. Once upon a time in America, you could purchase a jar of cream that smelled like rotten eggs. Not something you would over use if you had any sense of smell. This product was called hydrosulfasol (I am actually not certain of the spelling but that is how it sounded.)
The miracle of hydrosulfasol was that when applied to just about any wound, would heal it almost over night and with NO Scaring. When they pulled that one, they did so on the basis of testing that showed if you used this product every day of your life for 20 years you MIGHT end up with some sort of blood disorder. I cannot imagine anyone using this product any more than was necessary considering one went about smelling like rotten eggs, but none the less, it worked so they pulled it off the market. You actually can still get hydrosulfasol if you are dying of skin cancer, but only in a liquid form.
Back to the Leg Cramps pills. The current population of the United States, according to the Census Bureau, is 300,436,624. The article stated they had 600+ reports of severe side effects that included 93 deaths which were attributed to drug interaction. (Many drugs have interaction difficulties but are not pulled off the market, they have warning labels and conditions under which you should not take them)
If I round the number of reports up to 700, it means that 2.32994 per cent of the population has had severe side effects. Even if it was 10 per cent, it strikes me that a warning label rather than pulling something that works for so many off the market would be a saner action to take.
I could see where the one company that has the FDA's approval to market the product with quinine in it might be making out like gang busters if we had epidemic proportion malaria in this country, but I have not heard of such an epidemic so find myself mystified at the actions of the FDA.
It can only be chalked up to the American Way.. if something works, take it off the market or make it so expensive that the masses cannot afford it.
It is not just the government that pulls this kind of shenanigans, private corporations do as well. I cite my own experience with Hershey's. For a short time they made a 1 gram of sugar candy bar. It was not very large, it was relatively expensive, but it satisfied my diabetic Mother's craving for chocolate and we could keep her sugar intake down enough that it was not problematic. They apparently were not making enough money off this product as they discontinued it leaving me fewer options, none of which are as pleasing to Mother as that one was.
In that particular case, I blame their advertising as I am convinced that more people would have bought enough of the product to keep it in a good profit margin since it tasted good and was not so over priced that you could never afford it.
Is it really any wonder that so many Americans violate laws to get things (particularly medications) from Canada or Mexico where they can get what they want/ need and usually at far better prices than are available in the US? Or that so many Americans will be turning to ordering their tobacco products from overseas as the taxes continue to go up and up on these products, and the majority of those taxes don't even go to the medical projects related to the dangers of smoking. Americans dumped some tea into Boston Harbor a very long time ago over taxation. The modern day Boston Tea Party consists of going elsewhere for the products denied us or taxed beyond reason. Eventually I suppose the government will find ways to make criminals of us all.. as they take more and more of our freedoms and deny us more and more of the products we want and need in our lives.
I was informed by my friendly pharmacy staff, that this product had been pulled from the shelves per the FDA and they showed me an article from a newspaper that said the FDA has ordered pulling all products that contain quinine from the market unless you have malaria, in which case there is only one product that is approved. Well, we don't happen to have malaria, (under normal circumstances this would be a good thing) so we are just sol (sorry out of luck)
This is reminiscent of another product from many years ago. Once upon a time in America, you could purchase a jar of cream that smelled like rotten eggs. Not something you would over use if you had any sense of smell. This product was called hydrosulfasol (I am actually not certain of the spelling but that is how it sounded.)
The miracle of hydrosulfasol was that when applied to just about any wound, would heal it almost over night and with NO Scaring. When they pulled that one, they did so on the basis of testing that showed if you used this product every day of your life for 20 years you MIGHT end up with some sort of blood disorder. I cannot imagine anyone using this product any more than was necessary considering one went about smelling like rotten eggs, but none the less, it worked so they pulled it off the market. You actually can still get hydrosulfasol if you are dying of skin cancer, but only in a liquid form.
Back to the Leg Cramps pills. The current population of the United States, according to the Census Bureau, is 300,436,624. The article stated they had 600+ reports of severe side effects that included 93 deaths which were attributed to drug interaction. (Many drugs have interaction difficulties but are not pulled off the market, they have warning labels and conditions under which you should not take them)
If I round the number of reports up to 700, it means that 2.32994 per cent of the population has had severe side effects. Even if it was 10 per cent, it strikes me that a warning label rather than pulling something that works for so many off the market would be a saner action to take.
I could see where the one company that has the FDA's approval to market the product with quinine in it might be making out like gang busters if we had epidemic proportion malaria in this country, but I have not heard of such an epidemic so find myself mystified at the actions of the FDA.
It can only be chalked up to the American Way.. if something works, take it off the market or make it so expensive that the masses cannot afford it.
It is not just the government that pulls this kind of shenanigans, private corporations do as well. I cite my own experience with Hershey's. For a short time they made a 1 gram of sugar candy bar. It was not very large, it was relatively expensive, but it satisfied my diabetic Mother's craving for chocolate and we could keep her sugar intake down enough that it was not problematic. They apparently were not making enough money off this product as they discontinued it leaving me fewer options, none of which are as pleasing to Mother as that one was.
In that particular case, I blame their advertising as I am convinced that more people would have bought enough of the product to keep it in a good profit margin since it tasted good and was not so over priced that you could never afford it.
Is it really any wonder that so many Americans violate laws to get things (particularly medications) from Canada or Mexico where they can get what they want/ need and usually at far better prices than are available in the US? Or that so many Americans will be turning to ordering their tobacco products from overseas as the taxes continue to go up and up on these products, and the majority of those taxes don't even go to the medical projects related to the dangers of smoking. Americans dumped some tea into Boston Harbor a very long time ago over taxation. The modern day Boston Tea Party consists of going elsewhere for the products denied us or taxed beyond reason. Eventually I suppose the government will find ways to make criminals of us all.. as they take more and more of our freedoms and deny us more and more of the products we want and need in our lives.
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My grandfather was one of the men treated with hydrosulfasol after receiving 3rd degree burns in a big fire at Texaco Oil Refinery in Fillmore, CA. That was in the 1940s. His arms had some scarring but not the disfiguring scars typical of 3rd-degree burns. The family who developed the compound lived in Fillmore. I did some research years later and learned the daughter tried to get it approved but the FDA rejected it.
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