Companies and physicians at the FDA are increasingly using fast-track approval processes to bring treatments that don’t work to patients.
I detail the problems of the US treatment system in my book, The Medicalization of America. One of the problems is that most prescription drugs don’t work. Bloomberg has a good article on one of the reason our drugs don’t work in their April 15 article, “Americans Are Taking Drugs That Don’t Work and Paying Billions.”
According to the article, “One ALS drug made $400 million in sales for its maker. It doesn’t work. A cancer treatment brought in $500 million. That one turned out to have no effect on survival. A blood cancer medication made nearly $850 million before being withdrawn for two of its uses. That drug had been linked to patient deaths years prior. All of them were allowed to be sold to Americans because of the US Food and Drug Administration’s drive to get new drugs to patients quickly — sometimes even before they’re done testing.”
Who approves these drugs? Physicians at the FDA. Why do the physicians do this? Because it is physicians, and only physicians, who can sell prescription drugs. It’s what they do. It’s how they make their money, and they make lots of money selling these drugs. Be a physician is the highest paid profession in the US. Physicians are in the business of selling drugs. They don’t make selling prevention, and they don’t make money selling you a healthy salad for dinner. Their business is to treat you with drugs once you’re sick. As the CDC writes, “Underutilization of preventive services is largely the result of an implementation gap rather than an information gap; in other words, providers do not prioritize preventive care services although they know that preventive services can reduce the incidence and burden of chronic diseases. A major reason the implementation gap exists is that financial incentives do not align with a focus on preventing chronic diseases. Currently, most providers, including hospitals and physicians, are paid to treat rather than to prevent disease.”
And the physicians gatekeepers at the FDA, the physicians approving these drugs that don’t work, are often paid by the pharma companies to approve the drugs. Yes, physicians at the FDA are paid to approve the drugs. The newest trick that physicians use to make money selling drugs is to be paid by the drug company to approve the company’s drug after the approval process.
And practicing physicians, they’re on the take too. Billions of dollars are spent by pharma to induce physicians to prescribe their meds. As physicians have written, “Accepting industry money leads physicians to prescribe expensive, worthless drugs.” As these authors write, “A ban on industry payments to physicians may seem drastic, but it is the only appropriate response.” I’ll add, that ban must include practicing physicians and the physicians approving the drugs at the FDA. If you work for the FDA, you shouldn’t be allowed to then go to work for pharma, making millions of dollars a year as a payoff.
Stem Cells, Health, Technology 