HEALING CORRUPTED BY PRACTICES OF BIG PHARMA

With the birth of my first child this month, I started thinking a lot about
drugs. Not the illicit ones, as one might expect, but the licit drugs
supposedly sustaining the health of our nation. Having a baby means having
a relationship with the health care system, and I don't necessarily like
what I see. For the most part, our doctors and nurses provide exemplary
service, but in many instances they are also silent co-conspirators in the
shady business of pharmaceutically driven medicine.

Just as the pursuit of justice has been corrupted by the pursuit of money,
the art and science of healing has been corrupted by the aggressive
cost-recovery practices of multi-national pharmaceutical companies. Big
Pharma has recently taken quite a beating in the media and has responded
with sappy TV spots applauding themselves for the vast sums they spend on
research and development.

Certainly, lives have been saved and suffering alleviated by their slow and
painstaking development of chemical compounds. And certainly these
philanthropic companies have made a good buck fighting sickness. The real
question is whether we have achieved better living through chemistry.

Thinking about the world of licit drugs led me to the concept of iatrogenic
disease -- an illness precipitated by medical intervention. Iatrogenic
illness includes medical errors and adverse drug reactions and American
studies demonstrate that iatrogenic disease is the third leading cause of
death behind heart disease and cancer.

In Canada, studies show 25 per cent of patients who seek medical treatment
end up suffering from another illness brought about by medical or drug
error. It has also been reported that, in Canada, the cost of inappropriate
prescriptions exceeds $2 billion. Doctors cannot be held to unattainable
standards of perfection, but why are there so many adverse drug reactions
when drug companies spend billions to test these new medications ?

As pharmaceutical sales in the world market approach the trillion-dollar
level, the media have uncovered stories of doctors being bullied into
publishing results supportive of a drug's approval and of doctors being
bribed to prescribe new drugs.

The drug approval process in Canada is rigorous. If pharmaceutical
companies need to bring a drug to market quickly to offset enormous
research expenditures, they may need to take ethical shortcuts to enter the
market.

Health Canada has now issued a warning regarding pediatric use of
antidepressants, but few people knew that drug manufacturers tried to
suppress test results showing that certain antidepressants, including
Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil, were less effective than a placebo in many cases.
With 3 million Canadian children taking antidepressants, the aggressive
marketing practices of the pharmaceutical industry cannot be dismissed as
merely an over-zealous business strategy.

Big Pharma is in the business of sickness and it's in their best interest
to maintain a horde of sick people as consumers. When medicine is driven by
business objectives, the healing perspective gets skewed. For example,
painfully shy people are no longer simple introverts, but suffer "social
anxiety disorder." Conveniently, Zoloft is available to cast out the demons
of shyness.

So many lies are told when it comes to control over our bodies. Big
business distorts licit drug development and politics distorts illicit drug
designations. Last week, U.S. and Canadian police shut down a large ecstasy
distribution ring. Ontario's acting chief coroner said ecstasy is a
dangerous drug and "someone can die from just one dose". Although far more
people die from taking licit drugs, it is in the interest of politics to
demonize any drug not found in the conventional pharmacopeia.

I am not advocating the use of ecstasy. In fact, I think it is foolhardy
for anyone to take synthetic chemicals produced by hairy bikers or deluded
amateur chemists. Nonetheless, research scientists and doctors are more
than willing to make definitive statements about illicit drug dangers
despite the absence of sound empirical evidence.

In 2002, a report that single-time ecstasy use caused permanent
neurological damage, inexorably leading to Parkinson's disease, made
front-page news. Quietly, a year later,, the scientists had to issue a
retraction when it was discovered the neurologically damaged lab rats were
actually given another drug mislabeled as ecstasy.

North Americans have a huge appetite for legal and illegal drugs. The
pharmaceutical industry should be required to develop an effective
suppressant for this bad habit, but reducing licit drug dependencies would
be bad business. We know little about what we are putting into our bodies
and the interests of business and politics have regrettably added to the
confusion.

We must reclaim control over our bodies and protect our children from
developing drug dependencies. Instead of pushing little kids to master
fractions, we should be teaching them about the body and basic preventive
medicine. Only by learning how to stay healthy can a young person achieve a
better life without chemistry.