Heart attack. Stroke. Coma. Mania.
While conventional medical thinking would suggest all of these conditions would merit treatment, evolutions in modern medicine have created a rabbithole- esque world in which these grave conditions are, in fact, simply side effects of new drugs on the market.
And the effects are getting stranger. In a highly publicized ad campaign beginning with its approval by the FDA in 1999 and ignited in the early to late 2000s, Ambien was hailed as a miracle drug for those suffering from insomnia.
Between 2005 and 2010, however, the drug caused an excess of tens of thousands of hospitalizations with a 274 percent increase in Ambien related emergency department visits from women and a 144 percent increase in male Ambien-related emergency visits, according to a report released by SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, USA).
The cause of the visits? Hallucinations and driving or otherwise physically functioning while the patient is still asleep.
The chemicals in Ambien excite, or increase the presence and effectiveness, of the neurotransmitter GABA (gamma-Aminobutyric acid) which helps promote sleep.
The patients essentially enter into a zombie-like state. In a similarly bizarre case of reported side effects, a blood presser medication, Vasotec, left many patients without the ability to taste or smell.
Lipitor, highly revered for its ability to lower risk of heart disease, can cause irreversible amnesia.
Mirapex, intended for treatment of restless leg syndrome, has been linked to compulsive eating, gambling and increased sex drive.
In an effort to curb the liabilities associated with these dangerous drugs, manufacturers, instead of pulling the drugs from the market, often settle with simply posting the effects in fine print at the bottom of their ads or concealed in the fast-speech of the narrator of their media commercials.
Recently, however, the ineffective regulation of the development of prescription drugs has lent to the irresponsible corporate greed that drives the companies to produce the drugs as quickly as possible, pushing them through clinical trials at record speeds, often without adequate sample or time allowed to see the true nature of the effects.
It is, indeed, in the best interest of the companies to do so; the U.S. prescription drug market accounts for over $300 billion dollars of the U.S. economy annually, making the average American’s annual spending on the drugs over $800 per individual, according to a report released by IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics.
The problem, it seems, is the neglect of ethics and attention to the human element of medicine that has been lost in the rat race for the next million-dollar drug.
The U.S.’s addiction to capitalism has arguably been driving the progress of the country since its foundations, yet we have entered an age in which this capitalism from which we’ve built ourselves is now driving our own downfall.
We need a health care system that values drugs that help to cure patients, not cause them new, often more dangerous conditions.
We need medical care that focuses on developing the best treatment methods for the individual, not blanket-drugs fed to the masses in the hopes some will be cured. Most importantly, we need a system that remembers, at its core, its intent to save lives, not capitalize on them.
