Live long and prosper

The cost of bringing a new therapeutic agent to market is very high. New treatments for medical conditions usually bring greater effectiveness, greater safety, and/or better tolerance at a greater expense. Eventually, these products become generics, and newer, even better products hit the market.

If we believe the liberal mindset, we live in fear of being "taken advantage of" by the health care "medical-industrial complex". Doctors, biased by their relationships with pharmaceutical companies, prescribe expensive medications to enrich their friends at the expense of their patients. We hope that managed care organizations will "hold the line" and keep this from happening to us by encouraging generic drug use. We hope that the FDA will protect us from overuse of new products for existing conditions where the benefit of treatment has not met the FDA criteria for approval.

If you can handle the truth, DocBrain will tell you.

• Once a medication has passed the FDA, any doctor can prescribe it for any purpose, but that doctor better have evidence of benefit, tolerability and safety. The financial burden must also be considered.
• We, the people, are better served by pharmaceutical companies funding studies that expand the arsenal of available therapeutics than by funding studies that expand the indications for a product. Private, government, and institutional funding can extend the range of use of a product through smaller studies and case series. This information should be freely shared and available for the prescribing physicians.
• DocBrain is appalled by the fact that a skinhead can preach about Jews and Blacks and can have a website that sells screeds and this is not illegal and is defended by the ACLU, but pharmaceutical companies who have data showing benefit in non-FDA approved uses of their products are prohibited from sharing this information openly with prescribing physicians because of the potential of "profit". Does anyone else see a double standard here? A bias in favor of skinheads or against corporations? Which freedom better espouses the "common good"?
• Off label use of medications is common, especially in areas where the financial benefit of FDA approval is low for pharmaceutical companies and available therapeutic agents are few and ineffective. For example, if you have longstanding double vision from Multiple Sclerosis, you would find no FDA approved agent for treating your condition, yet one agent is available that is effective. I bet your doctor doesn't know what it is because the company that makes this product is forbidden to divulge this information.
• Millions of dollars have been spent on "restless legs syndrome" studies to get FDA approval for products shown in small unsponsored studies to be beneficial for this condition. Wouldn't you rather have just let doctors know that these products have been used effectively for RLS and have the phama companies spend their money on, say, R and D for a treatment for leukemia in children?