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They Don't Make'em Like They Use Toby Mark Ramirez In a society that relentlessly bombards the you with advertising, you are constantly hearing about "New and Improved" or "Better than Ever". Although many of the big drug companies claim to be producing the most innovative new drugs, they are just hiding behind there smoke screen of advertisement. In this article well look at just how effective are new drugs versus the old ones and what has led America to producing less innovative prescription medication. The decline of less innovative prescription medication began in the 1980s. In these years, the pharmaceutical industry experienced immense growth. This led to the growth of power and influence of the major pharmaceutical. Back before this period of rapid expansion, drug companies would grant money to a research center or university to conduct the clinical trails and tests to determine whether the new drug was safe. They sit back and cross there fingers, and hope the results were good and would support their marketing campaign for their new medication. But since the period of rapid expansion that gave the drug companies more money and power, drug companies have been conducting their own clinical trails. Pharmaceutical companies conducting there own clinical trails in and of itself are not so bad if the tests are still done subjectively, with no bias to the outcome. But this has led to the drug companies controlling every facet of the study, from the design of the clinical trails to the analysis of the data to the decision of whether or not to publish the results. This has made the results of the trails on new drugs very susceptible to what the drug companies want. For example, one of the recent drug trails that were not sponsored by a drug company was a study called ALLHAT. (Antihypertensive and Lipid Lowering Treatment to Prevent Heart Attack Trail) This was an eight year trial involving 42,000 people that studied the treatment of high blood pressure medication comparing 4 types of drugs. 1. Norvasc - calcium channel blocker that is produced by Pfizer 2. Cardura - alpha-adrenergic blocker which is prodiced by Pfizer 3. Zestril - angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor sold by Astra 4. Zeneca - generic diuretic (water pill) that has been on the market for 50 years. The results, the diuretic was just as good for lower blood pressure and was actually better at preventing some of the worst complications of high blood pressure; heart disease and stroke. The director of the Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute concluded the study by saying, "ALLHAT shows that the diuretics are the best choice to treat hypertension, both medically and economically. Diuretics were priced at about $37 a year in 2002 as apposed to $715 dollars for Norvasc. If Diuretics are better than the best medicines offered by the big drug companies how come we have never heard about them? Maybe because they are all produced through generic manufacturers who don't spend money on marketing. I hope this article has shed some light on this relatively shady subject. If you would like to read more helpful articles like this or need help locating your discount medication, then please join our pharmacy advocacy website Premier Mexican Pharmacies.com Patents allow drug companies exclusive rights to charge whatever they want while the patent is active. When the patent expires, other companies can begin to make generics of the formerly patented drug which drives the price down. So what the drug companies do is use the exact same drug, test it with the FDA for a slightly different use, slap a "new and improved" label on it, switch their marketing to the new product that holds the new patent, and call it a day. For example, Schering-Plough's patent on its money drug Claritin was about to run out. So they retested the same drug with the FDA for indoor allergy relief as well as seasonal allergy relief and called it Clarinex. They then launched a huge promotional campaign to switch users from Claritin to Clarinex because it was an improvement over the existing drug even though it is exactly the same. It was approved for that use only because they decided to test it for that use; if they would have tested Claritin for indoor allergy use it would have had the same results as Clarinex. If drug companies are not producing new drugs to help us because they are to busy trying to keep their prices high on existing drugs, then why support them by buying their drugs at unreasonably high prices? The best place to find medication at discount prices if ePharmacies.com. ePharmacies.com is a pharmacy resource website that will help you locate and compare the cheapest prices on your prescription medication from foreign sources such as Canada. Visit this Consumer Advocacy website for more information on ordering from online pharmacies. |
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