Re: Plavix (is my doctor a quack?)

From: outrider (outrider_at_despammed.com)
Date: 11/29/04 

Date: 29 Nov 2004 01:08:44 -0800

oreo123 wrote:
> Here it is in a nutshell....
>
> No family history of heart disease no stroke. At 49 I had blocked
right
> coronary artery heart attack... Male, non smoker, 5'8" 180 pounds.
Arrived
> too late and just cath'd. Placed on lipitor, folic acid, lisinopril,
toprol
> (originally metoprolol)... Three years later - Sept 04 had stress
test and
> cath'd. Placed 3 stents. One artery - left side - had gone from 40 to
80
> percent blocked in 3 years and was stented. Other stent was from
heart
> attack which was now closed to 90 percent. Plus another stent
downstream.
> Was placed on plavix. Then almost 3 weeks ago had a stroke. Had
double
> vision and then left side went numb. Regained left side - vision is
still
> double. Placed on cumodin. In hosp they found hole between heart
chambers
> that 20 percent of us have. They looked at legs for clots and found
nothing.
>
> Here are chol numbers before 3 stents installed and before the
stroke... Yes
> I modified diet intensly but we are not discussing that here. Well
yet.
> 5/28/04 Friday.
>
> B.P. 100 over 64 and heart rate was 56.
>
> Chol 111 <200 mg/dl
>
> Trig 65 <150 mg/dl
>
> HDL-C 42 >41 mg/dl
>
> LDL-C 56 <100 mg/dl
>
> Risk factor 2.6 0-5.1
>
> PSA .43 0 - 4.0 ng/dl
>
> And 4 years ago not fasting these were the numbers...
>
> total 239
> hdl is 39
>
> ratio is 6.1
>
> I cannot understand why I had a stroke while being so good with diet
and
> meds. One more mistake was not having long term disabilty insurance
as I am
> , well was, self employed.
>
> I had someone tell me yesterday that doctors get a commission from
drug
> companies for placing someone on drugs. Is that true? Supposedly that
was
> reported in AARP.?

Yes pharma gives "gifts" to physicians who presecribe their meds.
Office equipment, from pens to computers, trips to the local watering
hole and the Bahamas, and pay huge consultancy fees for their
"rent-a-quote" doctors to go on speaking junkets and author cholesterol
guidelines which make patients out of us all.

An article from AARP on The Truth About the Drug Companies the former
editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. Available through
Amazon.com

http://www.aarp.org/bulletin/prescription/Articles/a2004-09-13-drugmakersdope.html

http://tinyurl.com/552lj

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And from www.nofreelunch.org

THE BULL*** PARADE

Subject: You missed the biggest problem
Date: Sat, 27 Nov 1999 18:53:51 -0600
From: <xxxx@wt.net>
To: <justsayno@nofreelunch.org>

The worst problem with drug promotion lies not with the sales reps but
with industry-funded research. I personally witnessed the excesses for
8 years while on the faculty of a major medical school. This operates
at several levels.

First, one must understand that in academics teaching is like catching
fly balls and publishing is like hitting home runs. They didn't pay
Hank Aaron for his fielding. It isn't just the publishing and reflected
glory to the institution that drives academicians to do research. The
institution takes a cut of every grant, whether it's industry money or
an NIH grant. The percentages vary, but they are rather large; a $10MM
grant yields several million for the hospital, school, or whatever
institution the grantee works for. Those who bring in grant money have
*power*. What can they get with that power? A raise, a bigger office,
private secretary, less time actually having to teach residents or
touch a patient (when I was in academics it seemed to be a matter of
prestige to *not* carry a pager). Also, although it is difficult to
directly gain monetarily from grant money, one can usually buy a few
new computers or other toys that may find their way home.

Publishing favorable articles leads to invitations to speak at fun
places - all expenses paid - and receive nice honoraria to boot. Yes,
the drug companies fly private practitioners to nice places, but who
are they listening to? Impartial lecturers? No - they are listening to
the drug whores who will say nice things about the product. Some of the
drug whores I met during my own march in the bull*** parade were big
names in the field, including departmental chairmen. Some of the
biggest names in my specialty are, in my opinion, on the take. The
people who really get wined and dined at these meetings are the
"mouthpieces", not the attendees.

One time I was even mailed a lecture, complete with slides to present,
at a sponsored meeting at a very nice resort. When I balked and
insisted on giving my own lecture with my own slides it caused a major
storm. Another time, one of my colleagues asked another colleague to do
the statistics for his drug company data. When the results came back
unflattering he asked if perhaps a different statistical test might be
tried.

If a researcher plays the game well, publishing flattering studies and
giving lots of positive lectures, he might get a real plum: a
"consultant's contract", or a position on the "advisory board". This
can mean tens ofthousands of dollars of income per year for very little
actual work.

Therefore the real danger is in the poisonous influence the private
sector has on the generation of scientifi studies. Bad results and
balanced lectures are not rewarded. Sadly, with the drying up of public
funds for research in the past two decades, academic institutions have
had to rely more and more on private funding. When I graduated medical
school in 1979 medical journals did not require financial disclosure.
Now you see it everywhere - a sad reflection of the influence of
commercial research funding, and the closest anyone will come to
actually admitting we have a serious problem.

When a drug rep buys you lunch you know you are being fed a sales
pitch. The truly insidious aspect of all this is that published
peer-reviewed articles funded by drug companies are usually taken at
face value, and the lectures are given by drug whores (after all, they
are the ones with funding and have written all the articles - they are
the "authority" by virtue of the sheer volume they have published). The
damage done by this misinformation takes years to undo.

>
>
> "outrider" <outrider@despammed.com> wrote in message
> news:1101660823.375044.247370@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> > {Top posting to follow Ed's preference.}
> >
> >
> > Oreo said he had a stroke after he had been taking the medications.
We
> > don't know that the medications lessened or prevented anything. All
we
> > *know* is...he was taking the meds. He had events.
> >
> > Those meds do indeed have potential for side effect. But presumably
> > Oreo chose to take risk of those side effects because he hoped they
> > would lessen or prevent events. Apparently, he rolled the dice and
> > seven went home with some other guy.
> >
> > Yes. Oreo could have posted to smc in a rare booze, debauchery and
pork
> > chop free moment. We only know what he's told us. And he's told us
he
> > had normal cholesterol leves and no family risk. He had his heart
> > attack--one of the more than 50 per cent who do with no risks--and
all
> > the subsequent events with a normal cholesterol level and a
truckload
> > of meds.
> >
> > Zee
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Ed Mathes wrote:
> >> Where in his post did he describe "side effects"???
> >>
> >> Where did he mention stroke? I think you are mixing up the posts
of
> > Phillip
> >> and Oreo123.
> >>
> >> The problem with all these posts is lack of information. We have
no
> > idea
> >> what their medical history is, their blood pressure, their weight,
> > smoking,
> >> diabetes, peripheral vascular disease, other risk factors. Did he
> > take the
> >> medication as prescribed? What was the result of that treatment?
> > Was his
> >> blood pressure at goal? Cholesterol reduced? Did he have carotid
> > stenosis?
> >> Atrial fibrillation? Cerebral aneurysm? Did he flip a clot, pop
a
> > plaque,
> >> dissect an artery, or have an aneurysm leak?
> >>
> >> How old is Phillip? Oreo123 says he is 53.....you are trying to
undo
> > a
> >> something that took a lifetime to occur in just a couple months.
> >>
> >> Having a heart attack then being treated kind of puts the cart in
> > front of
> >> the horse, don't you think? How about trying to prevent the heart
> > attack to
> >> begin with?
> >>
> >> Secondary Prevention Trials with specific statins show they reduce
> >> events.....REDUCE not eliminate. Trials with specific ACE
inhibitors
> > show
> >> they REDUCE, not eliminate events. Trials with BETA BLOCKERS show
> > they
> >> REDUCE, not eliminate events. Exercise, weight loss, diet, blood
> > sugar
> >> control, blood pressure reduction, cholesterol control, all
REDUCE,
> > not
> >> eliminate risk of events (re: Jim Fix).
> >>
> >> Zee, heads up...not everyone who takes a specific medication has
> >> "devastating side effects"......
> >>
> >> Ed
> >> "outrider" <outrider@despammed.com> wrote in message
> >> news:1101621655.373984.98420@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> >> > {Top posting to follow Oreo's choice.}
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > But this is terrible. Why are we given these drugs if they
prevent
> >> > nothing? You had a heart attack. THEN you were put on drugs
which
> >> > presumably were meant to prevent further incidences, only to
have
> >> > another incident requiring three stents installed, and THEN a
> > stroke
> >> > from a blood clot in the brain.
> >> >
> >> > What did the meds--aspirin, toprol, folic acid, lipitor,
> > lisinopril,
> >> > which all surely must have devastating side effects--do apart
from
> >> > enriching the coffers of their respective pharmas?
> >> >
> >> > I am so sorry these things have happened to you. You deserve
> > better. We
> >> > *all*
> >> > deserve better.
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > Zee
> >

Quantcast