FDA Moves to Withdraw Unproven Blood Pressure Drug

Here we go again.  The headline says it all.

FDA Moves to Withdraw Unproven Blood Pressure Drug

Shire Laboratories’ low blood pressure medication ProAmantine had been on the market for 14 years despite the fact that Shire failed to submit evidence that it actually worked!  I kid you not! 

Our immediate reaction to such blatant irresponsibility is “shame on that drug company!”  But I liken that to shaming a match for causing a forest fire.  The responsibility lies not on the one who may have cheated their way into the medicine cabinets of 100,000 people.  Sometimes cheaters win, especially when there are not being watched.  I fault the federal food and drug administration whose job it is to oversee our food and drug safety.

Conflicts of interest in medicine have existed as long as pharmaceutical companies have existed.  Our FDA receives large amounts of money from pharmaceutical companies.  NY State Assemblyman, Daniel Haley published (Politics of Healing, 2000) that the relationship between the FDA and pharmaceutical companies was that of a revolving door.  The FDA employee who assist big drug companies steps through the revolving door to a high paying job with the drug companies.  Then he contacts his friends at the FDA to assist in getting new drugs approved.  That alone represents a horrific conflict of interest.  “Scientific” articles appearing in medical journals were often overseen and even written by drug companies without the readers’ awareness.  Those that were published by research physicians were often also biased because the drug companies paid the doctors for the favorable outcomes of the drugs being “studied.”

Here is the “take home” message.  Eat well, exercise, supplement with pure products and reduce the stress in your life.  That will minimize doctors visits and in doing so will minimize that taking of any pharmaceutical drug.   Wellness is not your doctors decision;  fast foods and too many restaurant meals, late hours, and a sedentary lifestyle, unfortunately will be treated with pharmaceutical drugs.  The good news is…..the choice is yours!