Big pharma is not yet capable of separating the potential cure part of their pills from the potential kill parts.
For anyone watching a commercial touting the benefits of a new prescription drug designed to cure a specific ill, it’s no surprise that the majority of airtime is devoted to the potential side effects of the supposed cure.
These can be more dangerous than the illness treated.
After watching one of these advertisements, you couldn’t blame anyone for putting the local emergency room on speed dial and thinking about alternative medicine as a, well, alternative.
It appears that big pharma isn’t yet capable of separating the potential cure part of their pills from the potential kill parts. (Though sometimes the side effects warnings are laughable, when, for example a drug to aid in sleep, has a side effect of causing drowsiness. Looking at you Lunesta®.) [1]
Let’s look at some examples where the pills we are prescribed make you unsure if you want to take the cure…
High Cholesterol, besides being a common condition, is a great generator of profits for the pharmaceutical industry. Pfizer promoted its drug, Lipitor®, now off patent, as a valid treatment for this condition.
It was; it could lower cholesterol. It could also do other things which were a consummation not devoutly to be wished.
Lipitor® was the proprietary name for atorvastatin. Besides lowering your cholesterol, it could make you nauseous and give you headaches, cause nosebleeds, sore throat, and a choice between constipation or diarrhea.
That’s just the easy stuff. There were potentially much more serious side effects, like liver and kidney damage, especially if you drank alcohol while you were taking the drug for your cholesterol. Also on the potential side effects menu was pancreatitis.[2]
So maybe you didn’t want to take Lipitor® and your doctor could prescribe another medicine to fight high cholesterol, like Crestor®.
Rosuvastatin was the name of the drug. Besides lowering your cholesterol, and to show it is every bit as side-effect effective as Lipitor® you can enjoy the side benefits of nausea, headache and constipation, and that’s just the appetizers.
The really bad stuff was pretty much the same as Lipitor®, pancreatitis, liver damage, kidney damage.[3]
Right about now, high cholesterol isn’t looking all that bad as a condition, so let’s go take a look at another common health problem big pharma loves to prescribe for — high blood pressure.
Hypertension can be a killer, but are the pills prescribed to treat it completely safe, completely without undesirable possible side effects?
Nope.
Let’s take a look at a popular blood pressure lowering medicine, Norvasc®. The real name is amlodipine. There is a possibility when you start taking this medicine you could have a heart attack — though that is rare. However, you probably didn’t have a heart attack in mind when you thought you just wanted to lower your blood pressure.
What else can it do to you, besides what it is supposed to do, this Norvasc®?
Would you care for some uncontrolled muscle movements? Perhaps, a side (effect) order of edema, or irregular heartbeat?[4]
It’s on the menu.
Perhaps we should choose another hypertension medicine. How about Bisoprolol®?
You can have your choice also of constipation or diarrhea, and if you aren’t lucky, liver problems and edema.[5]
We could go on and on, but is there any reason why our pharmaceutical researchers can’t give us the goods without so many side ‘bads’ when it comes to our prescriptions?
One of the reasons is — us. We are all similar biologically, but similar isn’t exactly the same, and our functions, our genetics, our age, and other factors can impact on what sort of an impact a prescription drug will have on us.[6]
Another reason is due to the requirements of the Federal Drug Administration that drug advertising shows the good, the bad and the ugly, some people may suffer side effects due to what has been called the ‘nocebo’ effect.
This is the dark side of the placebo effect, and some viewers of the drug commercials who may be prescribed the drug, are going to experience the side effects as advertised, due to their expectancy of suffering from them.[7]
Of course, another reason, for those of a more cynical turn of mind is, the big pharma companies are more interested in quick profits from their products than safety.
Could this be true?
‘Pharmaceutical companies’ profit margins receive significant bumps when they launch new drugs, specifically specialty drugs, used to treat life-threatening conditions.’ [8]
Why You Should Care
There are millions of people prescribed drugs for various conditions, and there are millions of dollars of profits for the companies that produce them.
We are all well aware that the price of prescriptions in the United States greatly exceeds that of other nations.
After regular viewing of drug commercials, we are all well aware — or at least should be — that these expensive drugs we are prescribed are accompanied by a host of undesirable side effects — some dangerous, some deadly.
Your author had the misfortune of taking a COVID-19 booster shot, from those wonderful people who gave us Lipitor® and for ten months afterwards, had the ‘benefits’ of full body hives and shortness of breath.
For a short time, I also took Lipitor® in a low dosage, and experienced severe muscle cramps.
I mention the personal information so the reader can understand I’ve had a few dogs in this fight, and in this article, something more than reporting is going on.
We in the United States are the only developed nation that doesn’t have a national health system as a right.
In our land of the free, medical care isn’t and can be so costly that an illness could lead to a personal bankruptcy, unless we (our employers) have paid many thousands of dollars per year for health insurance. We in the United States pay more for our prescription drugs than other developed nations do — a lot more.
Perhaps we should be entitled to get our money’s worth where our life and health is concerned. Perhaps big pharma could do a better job in creating our cures while leaving out the side effects that can disable and kill us.
So far, they haven’t. That is something that should concern us all, for our lives are in the balance.
[1] LUNESTA SIDE EFFECTS, ADDICTIONS AND DANGERS 8/30/24 AMERICAN ADDICTION CENTERS https://americanaddictioncenters.org/lunesta-treatment/side-effects
[2] SIDE EFFECTS OF ATORVASTATIN NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE (UK) https://www.nhs.uk/medicines/atorvastatin/side-effects-of-atorvastatin/
[3] SIDE EFFECTS OF ROSUVASTATIN NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE (UK) https://www.nhs.uk/medicines/rosuvastatin/side-effects-of-rosuvastatin/
[4] SIDE EFFECTS OF AMLODIPINE MAYO CLINIC WEBSITE https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/amlodipine-oral-route/description/drg-20061784
[5] SIDE EFFECTS OF BISOPROLOL NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE (UK) https://www.nhs.uk/medicines/bisoprolol/side-effects-of-bisoprolol/
[6] Why Do Prescription Drug Commercials List So Many Side Effects? Hastings, 3/3/25 University of Colorado Anschutz Medical School https://news.cuanschutz.edu/news-stories/why-do-prescription-drug-commercials-list-so-many-side-effects
[7] IBID.
[8] HOW BIG PHARMA REAPS BIG PROFITS WHILE HURTING EVERYDAY AMERICANS Meller, Ahmed, 8/30/19 Center for American Progress https://www.americanprogress.org/article/big-pharma-reaps-profits-hurting-everyday-americans/