The scary truth about pharmaceutical medicine.

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Jesse
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The scary truth about pharmaceutical medicine.

Post by Jesse »

https://www.ted.com/talks/ben_goldacre_ ... _prescribe" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
When a new drug gets tested, the results of the trials should be published for the rest of the medical world — except much of the time, negative or inconclusive findings go unreported, leaving doctors and researchers in the dark. In this impassioned talk, Ben Goldacre explains why these unreported instances of negative data are especially misleading and dangerous.
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Andrew108
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Re: The scary truth about pharmaceutical medicine.

Post by Andrew108 »

Yep. This is a huge problem. Consider for instance the effectiveness of Tamiflu. http://www.bmj.com/tamiflu" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;".

Billions of dollars/euros has been spent by governments intent on stockpiling this drug. Tamiflu has been shown to only slightly mediate the effects of flu. It isn't a preventative and also comes with side effects.
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oushi
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Re: The scary truth about pharmaceutical medicine.

Post by oushi »

I am yet to find one aspect of human activity which is not driven by desire for power (through money in this example). Even religion is not free of it. Sad, but true.
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DGA
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Re: The scary truth about pharmaceutical medicine.

Post by DGA »

Also remarkable, at least to me, is that many of the drugs that have a very long record of effectiveness emerged as lucky guesses. For instance: Plaquenil is a derivative of quinine. It was developed early on as a treatment for malaria. Later it became clear that... somehow... it also has the quality of helping people with chronic joint pain.

Aspirin, or rather a close cognate, was known to the Greeks.

I use a medication now to treat migraine headaches that was developed back in the 19th century (a salt made from valerian) for who knows what purpose. Someone's science project? Anyway it's usually prescribed as a mood stabilizer for people with bipolar disorder, but for some unknown cause at a lower dose it seems to make migraines less frequent and less dismal. Sign me up.

It seems to me that the science around pharmaceuticals knows both more and less than one might think it does.
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Lindama
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Re: The scary truth about pharmaceutical medicine.

Post by Lindama »

yes, the corruption with testing is a big prob.... not to mention the toxic additives.
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Myoho-Nameless
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Re: The scary truth about pharmaceutical medicine.

Post by Myoho-Nameless »

Proponents of western medicine frequently denigrate the effects of other forms of medicine by some variation of "that was probably just the placebo effect". Without realizing that much of the success of western medicine stems also, from the placebo effect. In fact I heard a statistic, I forget specifically what, but it was as high as one third of all recovery can be attributed to that. And in fact the placebo can still work if you know you are taking a placebo.
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Simon E.
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Re: The scary truth about pharmaceutical medicine.

Post by Simon E. »

I'll tell you a scary truth...
I had surgery which 20 years ago had 10 % success rate.
90% of people died.

Thanks to two things the success rate is now 70% and rising.

Those two things are advances in surgical techniques and advances in pharmacology.

So you pharmaphobes, next time you are bed bound with pneumonia or bleeding stomach ulcers have the courage of your convictions and insist that you treated by homeopathy or your local shaman.

Or next time you are exposed to smallpox..oh hang on, the biggest killer known to human kind has been eradicated by pharma hasn't it..and polio will soon follow.

And you probably think that the average lifespan in developed counties has risen despite pharma...don't you ? 8-)
The only pockets of polio now are in areas where the local shamen think that vaccinations programmes are ' unnatural.'
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Jesse
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Re: The scary truth about pharmaceutical medicine.

Post by Jesse »

Simon, did you even watch the video, I Don't see how holding drug companies and researchers to ethical standards and transparency insinuates that shamanism and alternative medications are better somehow.

@ jikan, do you mean Lithium Salts? I remember reading lithium salts originated when people who swam in certain hot springs / water sources found mood improvements etc, later they found the water sources were rich in lithium.


Edit: oh you meant this:
Myoho-Nameless wrote:Proponents of western medicine frequently denigrate the effects of other forms of medicine by some variation of "that was probably just the placebo effect". Without realizing that much of the success of western medicine stems also, from the placebo effect. In fact I heard a statistic, I forget specifically what, but it was as high as one third of all recovery can be attributed to that. And in fact the placebo can still work if you know you are taking a placebo.
Placebo's can work, but in most cases the method of actions in pharmaceuticals is well understood. For example anti-biotics, blood pressure medications etc. There are however, much shadier sections of the industry where medications that are brought to market are more or less fraudulent snake oil.
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DGA
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Re: The scary truth about pharmaceutical medicine.

Post by DGA »

Hi Jesse,

No, I'm not on lithium and never have been, but I do believe that medication is a life-saver for many who struggle with bipolar disorder (I do not have bipolar disorder). This is a terrific read, just parenthetically: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8502.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I'm currently prescribed a low dose of this as (in the words of a neurologist who has helped me a great deal) "prophylactic against migraines."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valproate_semisodium" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

So long as I stay hydrated, the side-effects are less bothersome than the aspirin-and-caffeine regimen I had been using. In this and so many instances, as Simon E has pointed out, the scientists who develop pharmaceuticals have led to great benefit for beings. Jonas Salk is a particularly obvious hero--his altruistic intentions should be celebrated--and he's obviously not the only public health advocate who has saved and improved and lengthened human lives.

I do have a gripe with the way the pharmaceutical industry works as a capitalist enterprise, which is where the research linked in the OP comes in.
Simon E.
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Re: The scary truth about pharmaceutical medicine.

Post by Simon E. »

There are many drawbacks to the use of lithium for those with Bipolar Syndrome.
But there are much bigger drawbacks to leaving the condition untreated.
And currently there is little alternative..
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AlexanderS
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Re: The scary truth about pharmaceutical medicine.

Post by AlexanderS »

On a somewhat similar note http://www.independent.co.uk/news/busin ... 68321.html

As someone who has been really damaged uneccesarily by pharmaceutical medicine i'm not too symphatic about people defending it's reputation. The Pharma Companies already spend billions on doing that.
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Johnny Dangerous
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Re: The scary truth about pharmaceutical medicine.

Post by Johnny Dangerous »

AlexanderS wrote:On a somewhat similar note http://www.independent.co.uk/news/busin ... 68321.html

As someone who has been really damaged uneccesarily by pharmaceutical medicine i'm not too symphatic about people defending it's reputation. The Pharma Companies already spend billions on doing that.

There are also people (like my Mom for instance - multiple transplant recipient) who would literally be dead if not for pharmaceutical research.

It's one thing to criticize the business (and perhaps some of the research) practices in the for-profit Pharmaceutical industry - I think most here would agree with that., Quite another to see the whole industry as some kind of conspiracy, like so many things, people prefer to assign agency that is "out to get them", rather than the thing that causes most suffering - ignorance.

Why that notion is controversial on a Buddhist forum I have no idea..but it often seems to be.

Article itself made some very valid points, btw.
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Nemo
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Re: The scary truth about pharmaceutical medicine.

Post by Nemo »

All this is from memory so feel free to correct me.

As far as drug trials FDA only requires the best three. By law all trials must be submitted and stored by the FDA. The Cochrane Collective is using freedom of information requests to get access to all trials submitted. That is what exposed Tamiflu. It is preventive and stops the flu from spreading by preventing it from rupturing cell wall of infected cells IIRC. It does little once the flu has already set in. Cochrane is starting the same process on many more drugs. Many SSRI's and some benzos will face the same scrutiny shortly. The big drug companies already know this is coming and research has moved on.

There are some very big things on the horizon. Stem cell research has lead to some very interesting lines of research and applied technology. It turns out we have stem cells throughout our body and it is possible to use peptide hormones to activate them. Peptides like thymosin beta 4 and GDF11 are bioidentical and can heal corneas, heart muscle and cause neuronal regeneration. Some of the partial engineered peptides like dihexa can cause neural regeneration in vitro at 10,000,000 times normal. NSI-189 and GSK650394 are also candidates for neurogenesis treatments for depression, PTSD, stroke and blunt force trauma. Literally healing your brain.

They are also getting dirt cheap to make. Custom peptides are only 250$ setup and 40$ per amino in the peptide chain. Standard peptides are much cheaper and there are already clubs on the internet for group buys for "biohackers" who do clinical trials on themselves. Some of them work incredibly well on impossible chronic conditions in my experience. I would recommend staying with bioidentical peptides as the metabolic pathways and long term side effects of the engineered ones are unknown.
AlexanderS
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Re: The scary truth about pharmaceutical medicine.

Post by AlexanderS »

Johnny Dangerous wrote:
AlexanderS wrote:On a somewhat similar note http://www.independent.co.uk/news/busin ... 68321.html

As someone who has been really damaged uneccesarily by pharmaceutical medicine i'm not too symphatic about people defending it's reputation. The Pharma Companies already spend billions on doing that.

There are also people (like my Mom for instance - multiple transplant recipient) who would literally be dead if not for pharmaceutical research.

It's one thing to criticize the business (and perhaps some of the research) practices in the for-profit Pharmaceutical industry - I think most here would agree with that., Quite another to see the whole industry as some kind of conspiracy, like so many things, people prefer to assign agency that is "out to get them", rather than the thing that causes most suffering - ignorance.

Why that notion is controversial on a Buddhist forum I have no idea..but it often seems to be.

Article itself made some very valid points, btw.
I don't think they are out to get people, they are out to make a profit. And history shows that they choose profit over ethics every time and repeatedly engage in criminial activities to get what they want.

On that subject I would highly recommend "Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare - by Peter Gøetzsche"
It is a very good book and the authour is a very thorough intelligent person. He is a leader of a independent institute that researches the effects of medicine.
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Roland
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Re: The scary truth about pharmaceutical medicine.

Post by Roland »

I haven't watched the video yet, but based on that line you quoted, this isn't just a problem in pharma science, it is also prevalent in nutritional science and elsewhere. Many things aren't published either because of poor study design or other reasons, but also because sometimes a study shows a negative or neutral effect when they researchers wanted to show a positive effect. And that kind of science doesn't make money or headlines. There are something like 1.2 or 1.6 million scientific studies published each year... I wonder if there are stats on how many studies are not published and how much that skews the results of all those published.

I'd be dead right now from suffocation and worse if it were not for pharmaceuticals. The medical system has also failed me numerous times. But I'm excited about newer routes and technologies like Nemo stated above, nutrigenomics, all the study being done on the methylation cycle like the work of Dr Amy Yasko and so on. I would love to treat asthma without having to take heavy duty inhalers that have a .6% chance of causing asthma related death and pay enormous amounts for breathing.
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