Nationwide Shortage Of Ritalin And Adderall
In November Jacob Sloan posted a story about a chronic shortage of Adderall in New York City. Now the New York Times reports that the shortage extends to Ritalin and generic versions, nationwide:
Medicines to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are in such short supply that hundreds of patients complain daily to the Food and Drug Administration that they are unable to find a pharmacy with enough pills to fill their prescriptions.
The shortages are a result of a troubled partnership between drug manufacturers and the Drug Enforcement Administration, with companies trying to maximize their profits and drug enforcement agents trying to minimize abuse by people, many of them college students, who use the medications to get high or to stay up all night.
Caught in between are millions of children and adults who rely on the pills to help them stay focused and calm. Shortages, particularly of cheaper generics, have become so endemic that…
America’s Concentration Threatened By Adderall Shortage
Is Adderall the crystal meth of the middle and upper classes? Well, both drugs became huge at around the same time. The Fix writes that prices are skyrocketing and panic and withdrawal are setting in across the nation as pharmacies’ shelves run short:
When Jay V.’s pharmacist told him about the nationwide Adderall shortages last weekend, he reacted as any economically rational finance professional would, and attempted to bribe her. Whatever the cost, “it’s cheaper than cocaine,” his reasoning went. And even if it isn’t, you can’t put a price on never having to go back to doing bumps in the work bathroom to get through late night deal committee meetings, can you?
Jay’s pharmacist said she was reserving her supply for regular customers, but that the price had doubled and the clock was ticking.
If addiction is the kind of thing you think about a lot, it’s easy to overlook its significance in…
President Obama Issues Executive Order To Ease Shortages in Vital Medicines
Whatever Obama does, the Republicans will say it’s the wrong thing to do … but wouldn’t it be something if he dealt with the root of the problem (Big Pharma)? Lara Salahi reports for ABC News:
While many advocates say President Obama’s executive order to reduce a dire shortage of life-saving hospital medications is an essential step, others say the order is not enough to stop price gouging by some pharmaceutical companies.
Essential cancer drugs have arguably taken the hardest hit. Hospitals have reported the worst shortage in nearly a decade of chemotherapy agents like doxorubicin.
The new order instructs the Food and Drug Administration to broaden reporting of potential drug shortages, expedite regulatory reviews that can help prevent shortages, and examine whether potential shortages have led to price gouging. The drug shortage has compromised or delayed care for some patients and may have led to otherwise preventable deaths.
Christopher W. Hansen, president of…
Should All Human Beings Pop the (Theoretical) ‘Limitless’ Pill?
Yes, a pop culture way to ask a “Brave New World” question. Rahul Parikh poses on Salon:
The film’s “miracle” drug may seem far-fetched, but it’s based in a medical reality: Taking certain medications, specifically those developed to treat psychiatric and neurological disorders, can boost cognitive performance in otherwise healthy people.
Many of us instinctively recoil from such an idea for moral reasons. Sculpting our brains, unlike, say, sculpting our noses, seems like cheating. But consider this: 7 percent of surveyed college students (and some 25 percent of those on elite campuses) have taken an unprescribed Ritalin — or a similar drug used to treat attention deficit disorder — to boost their performance on an exam.
And the phenomenon is not restricted to college students trying to raise their grade point averages: The military has a history of encouraging — and sometimes even ordering — soldiers to take Ritalin or Provigil, a drug that…
Tylenol, Extra Strength, Is the Number One Cause of Liver Failure
Big Pharma being responsible? Are we living on Htrae? Via USA Today:
TRENTON, NJ — Johnson & Johnson said Thursday that it’s reducing the maximum daily dose of its Extra Strength Tylenol pain reliever to lower risk of accidental overdose from acetaminophen, its active ingredient and the top cause of liver failure.
The company’s McNeil Consumer Healthcare Division said the change affects Extra Strength Tylenol sold in the U.S. — one of many products in short supply in stores due to a string of recalls.
Starting sometime this fall, labels on Extra Strength Tylenol packages will now list the maximum daily dose as six pills, or a total of 3,000 milligrams, down from eight pills a day, or 4,000 milligrams. Beginning next year, McNeil will also reduce the maximum daily dose for its Regular Strength Tylenol and other adult pain relievers containing acetaminophen, the most widely used pain killer in the country.
Besides Tylenol, acetaminophen…
Anti-Depressant Patients Are More Likely to Suffer Depression Relapse
Photo: Tom Varco (CC)
From ScienceDaily:
In a paper that is likely to ignite new controversy in the hotly debated field of depression and medication, evolutionary psychologist Paul Andrews concludes that patients who have used anti-depressant medications can be nearly twice as susceptible to future episodes of major depression.
Andrews, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, is the lead author of a new paper in the journal Frontiers of Psychology.
The meta-analysis suggests that people who have not been taking any medication are at a 25 per cent risk of relapse, compared to 42 per cent or higher for those who have taken and gone off an anti-depressant.
Andrews and his colleagues studied dozens of previously published studies to compare outcomes for patients who used anti-depressants compared to those who used placebos.
They analyzed research on subjects who started on medications and were switched to placebos, subjects who were administered placebos…
U.S. Hooked On Anti-Psychotics
Photo: FtWashGuy (CC)
James Ridgeway, senior Washington correspondent with Mother Jones Magazine, author of 16 books and contributor to disinformation anthologies, writes for Al Jazeera that Big Pharma has got America hooked on psychotic drugs:
Has America become a nation of psychotics? You would certainly think so, based on the explosion in the use of antipsychotic medications. In 2008, with over $14 billion in sales, antipsychotics became the single top-selling therapeutic class of prescription drugs in the United States, surpassing drugs used to treat high cholesterol and acid reflux.
Once upon a time, antipsychotics were reserved for a relatively small number of patients with hard-core psychiatric diagnoses – primarily schizophrenia and bipolar disorder – to treat such symptoms as delusions, hallucinations, or formal thought disorder. Today, it seems, everyone is taking antipsychotics. Parents are told that their unruly kids are in fact bipolar, and in need of anti-psychotics, while old people with dementia are dosed, in…
Should We Say “Maybe” to Drugs in Afghanistan?
There’s a global morphine shortage in the west (while the Taliban is financing terrorism through black-market opium). So for over a year, a mainstream journalist for both Information Week and Library Journal has been contacting Congressmen about the “Sustainable Opportunities for Rural Afghans Act.” (”Whereas granting rural Afghan farming families an economic ally other than the Taliban is good for the national security of the United States…”)
Basically, the act would allow American pharmaceutical companies to buy opium from the farmers in Afghanistan — and even offer aid and bonuses to the farmers to deter their cooperation with the Taliban (before eventually transitioning them to other crops). “Action has been nil and talk has been quiet,” the reporter writes, even though it could help efforts to “defeat, disrupt, and dismantle” al Qaeda and its allies.
“As we press our advantage after the death of bin Laden, it seems reasonable to use every available tool toward…
Big Pharma Has No Idea What the Hell Their Drug Will Do to You
Kyle Wagner writes on Gizmodo:
Everyone’s cracked wise about cheerful voices in commercials telling us that an erectile dysfunction drug might make you blind, but have you ever read the full list of side effects? Prescription medication labels average an insane 70 possible side effects, according to a new study.
The study examined 5,600 medications, and found the worst offenders to be antidepressants, antiviral medications, and restless leg syndrome medications treatments. One especially ridiculous drug listed 525. The exhaustive lists fly in the face of FDA guidelines asking drug companies to keep the lists manageable. Obviously, 525 is a preposterous number of side effects to list on a label, but isn’t it just as concerning that we’re prescribing drugs that could go wrong in 500 different ways?
Will Big Pharma Take Over The American Market For Medical Marijuana?
If the hundreds of uses for cannabis doesn’t plead the case for its legalization, the money made from its medical industry just might do it. The Washington Independent reports:
The American Independent has previously reported on the growing corporatization of the incipient medical marijuana industry at a time when medical marijuana dispensaries scrabble to hold on to their businesses in the face of a multi-pronged federal crackdown. But there are signs afoot that it just may become ever more corporate if a Big Pharma push to get the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to recognize a cannabis-derived drug is successful.
Last week, British prescription drug manufacturer GW Pharmaceuticals announced a licensing agreement with drug giant Novartis, maker of Ritalin and Excedrin, to begin selling GW’s drug Sativex in markets across Asia, Africa, Oceania and the Middle East. The medication is already available in Britain, where it’s produced and marketed by Bayer, and in Canada and…
The Top Ten Prescription Drugs In America
Health care research firm IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics has released its annual Top Ten list of prescription drugs:
- Vicodin (hydrocodone/acetaminophen)
- Zocor (simvastatin)
- Lisinopril
- Synthoid (levothyroxine sodium)
- Norvasc (amlodipine besylate)
- Prilosec (omeprazole)
- Zithromax (azithromycin)
- Amoxicillin
- Metformin (Glucophage)
- Hydrochlorothiazide
The list above is clearly dominated by generic drugs, which are shown to quickly overtake sales of the far more expensive brand name drugs. Classified by the amount spent on prescription drugs, the list looks very different:
1. Lipitor®
2. Nexium®
3. Plavix®
4. Advair Diskus®
5. Abilify®
Indonesia’s Plant-Based Birth Control Pill for Men
While the U.S. progress lags, Indonesia readies a male contraception pill. Patrick Winn writes on Global Post:
On the remote Indonesian island of Papua, tribesmen have long noticed the curious effect of a shrub called “gandarusa.”
If you chew its leaves often enough, men say, your wife won’t get pregnant. Indonesian scientists, who have transferred this folk method from the jungle to the lab, claim they can extract the shrub’s active ingredient and mass produce it as an over-the-counter pill.
If they’re right, they will accomplish what Western pharmaceutical giants have researched but failed to deliver for decades: a birth control pill for men.
“With luck, it could be released late this year, but it will probably be sold in stores early next year,” said Sugiri Syarief, the head of Indonesia’s state-run National Family Planning Coordination Board. Researchers began analyzing gandarusa in 1988, Sugiri said. Animal and human trials began in the 1990s and…
Losing The War Against Drug-Resistant Superbugs
We’ve all heard warnings that overuse of antibiotics would breed drug-resistant superbugs, but the day of reckoning seems to be approaching faster than anyone anticipated, and science is at a loss for what to do. The pharmaceutical industry is proving to be little help, having abandoned the field of medicines that cure things for the golden revenue flow of drugs that individuals consume chronically until death (e.g. antidepressants and cholesterol-controlling medicine). Are we headed for a future of human helplessness against bacterial plagues, as in the Middle Ages? Via News Daily:
Welcome to a world where the drugs don’t work. For decades scientists have managed to develop new medicines to stay at least one step ahead of an ever-mutating enemy.
Now, though, we may be running out of road. MRSA alone is estimated to kill around 19,000 people every year in the United States — far more than HIV and AIDS —…
Meditation Seriously Reduces Pain
Photo: Beyond My Ken (CC)
You have to imagine the big pharmaceutical companies are freaking out over this new study. Or perhaps coming up with drugs to induce a meditative state (but with a ton of side effects). Anne Harding reports for CNN:
You don’t have to be a Buddhist monk to experience the health benefits of meditation. According to a new study, even a brief crash course in meditative techniques can sharply reduce a person’s sensitivity to pain.
In the study, researchers mildly burned 15 men and women in a lab on two separate occasions, before and after the volunteers attended four 20-minute meditation training sessions over the course of four days. During the second go-round, when the participants were instructed to meditate, they rated the exact same pain stimulus — a 120-degree heat on their calves — as being 57 percent less unpleasant and 40 percent less intense, on average.
“That’s pretty…
Mark Frauenfelder: ‘Passport Ownership Prevents Diabetes’
Mark Frauenfelder of BoingBoing writes, “It’s conclusive: owning a passport will prevent you from becoming diabetic.”
Are Drug Companies Paying Your Doctor?
Is your doctor getting paid to hawk particular medicines to you? Using information made public as a result of lawsuits, ProPublica has a searchable database of drug company payments made to U.S. physicians.
Drug companies have long kept secret details of the payments they make to doctors for promoting their drugs. But seven companies have begun posting names and compensation on the Web, some as the result of legal settlements. ProPublica compiled these disclosures, totaling $295 million, into a single database that allows patients to search for their doctor. Receiving payments isn’t necessarily wrong, but it does raise ethical issues.
Europe To Outlaw Hundreds Of Herbal Health Products
Count this one as a sweeping victory for Big Pharma: regulations set to go into effect across Europe this year will ban hundreds of herbal medicines in one fell swoop. I appreciate the EU’s effort to keep people safe from untested substances, but is it really possible that echinacea could be any more hazardous than, say, prescription antidepressants? The Independent reports:
Hundreds of herbal medicinal products will be banned from sale in Britain next year under what campaigners say is a “discriminatory and disproportionate” European law.
With four months to go before the EU-wide ban is implemented, thousands of patients face the loss of herbal remedies that have been used in the UK for decades. From May 1, 2011, traditional herbal medicinal products must be licensed or prescribed by a registered herbal practitioner to comply with an EU directive passed in 2004. The directive was introduced in response to rising concern over adverse…
The 5 Most Profitable Drugs Do Not Cure You
The Village Voice has an interesting cover story about ibogaine which prompted Jason Parham to observe on the Village Voice blog site:
“Pharmaceutical companies don’t like cures. Really, they don’t — that’s the sad thing. They like treatment. Something for cholesterol or high blood pressure that you take for years and years, every day. That’s where the profit is.”
When we read that, a light went on. The worst thing for a drug company is a pill you take that completely cures you of your ailment with one dose, right? Where’s the money in that?
So, with that in mind, we thought we’d test Kuehne’s theory, and look at the five most profitable drugs in the United States.
Guess what they all have one in common? They never cure you…
Doctors & Drug Companies – Just Doing Business?
Logo for Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America
CBS News nails it pretty well in the first sentence of this report:
In other industries you might call it a bribe, but when drug companies provide travel expenses, consulting fees and other goodies to doctors, it’s just called doing business.
At least that’s the conclusion of a new study by the Mongan Institute for Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital, which took the moral pulse of 1,900 physicians across the country.
The good news? The number of docs on the dole has fallen from an astounding 94 percent in 2004. The bad news? Three quarters of America’s physicians still take some kind of hand outs from companies who want them to prescribe their medicine to their patients, according the study.
And it seems to work.
Doctors with “industry relationships” were more likely to self-report prescribing big ticket drugs, according to the paper. And regions with higher health care…
