(05-10-12) Big Pharma pushes doctors to overprescribe drugs, study finds

by Sherry Baker, Health Sciences Editor

(NaturalNews) Know anyone taking prescription drugs? The odds are enormous you
do. And it's likely they are taking drugs they don't need because their doctors
are too quick to fall under the influence of Big Pharma's aggressive drug sales
reps.

Consider these statistics: almost half of all Americans are currently
diagnosed with a chronic condition and 40 percent of those older than 60 taking
five or more medications. Is it really possible that many people in the U.S.
have illnesses that need to be treated with multiple drugs?

This question obviously raises issues about the nature of the relationship
between the expanding definition of chronic illness and the explosion of
prescription drug use in the U.S. -- issues Michigan State University
anthropologist Linda M. Hunt, PhD., decided to research.

Dr. Hunt looked into dramatic increases in the diagnosis of common, chronic
conditions and the use of prescription drugs to treat these health woes . She
specifically looked at two conditions which can often be relieved with
lifestyle changes -- type 2 diabetes and hypertension -- that were treated in
44 primary care clinics.

Her research team interviewed 58 clinicians and 70 of their patients, and
observed 107 clinical consultations in order to assess the doctors' treatment
strategies and the factors influencing their treatment decisions. They found
that doctors usually prescribed at least two or more drugs per condition.

More than half of the patients studied were taking five or more drugs.
Interviews with these people showed the cost of the drugs was often a hardship
and the patients were often made sicker because of adverse side-effects.

So why are so many people taking so many drugs? The new study, just published
in The Annals of Internal Medicine, concludes more drugs are prescribed because
the threshold for what constitutes an "illness" keeps getting lower and lower,
thanks in large part to Big Pharma's influence. For example, what was once
normal blood pressure is now too high or, if approaching high, is called "pre-
hypertension" and Big Pharma recommends treatment. And instead of telling
someone with high blood sugar to lose weight and exercise and eventually they
could improve or normalize their condition, it's likely a doctor will emphasize
that a person found to have type 2 diabetes will need to rely on medication for
life.

Dr. Hunt points out in her study that physicians are caught up in an "auditing
and reward system." That means doctors are rewarded by drug companies for
prescribing more and more drugs. Perhaps most disturbing is what Hunt calls a
"prescribing cascade." Simply put, drugs are prescribed to help relieve side
effects caused by other drugs. Then still more drugs can be prescribed to
relieve any new side-effects from the recently prescribed drugs.

To reverse and limit the influence of the Big Pharma on clinical practice, Dr.
Hunt recommends the following:

* Policies are needed to exclude individuals or organizations with financial
conflicts of interest from involvement with clinical guideline-writing panels
* Doctors should be discouraged from seeing drug representatives
* Monitoring of doctor auditing and reward plans must be put in place to
search for evidence of unintended negative effects on patients

Another study just published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), by Harvard
researchers reveals another problem caused by Big Pharma: business executives
are unaware they could be wasting billions of their gross profits on
ineffective, even harmful drugs in their health plans. They are also paying for
treating the side-effects of these drugs.

Sources:

http://www.annfammed.org/content/10/5/452/suppl/DC1
http://www.annfammed.org/content/10/5/452.full
http://www.bmj.com
http://blogs.hbr.org

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