OFF LABEL….As the sun was setting on the final days of the Bush administration, they left us with one final gift: a new rule that made it easier for drug manufacturers to promote “off-label” prescription drug uses. The pharmaceutical industry loves this, of course, and they spend millions of dollars promoting their latest narrowly targeted wonder drugs to a wider audience while pretending they’re doing no such thing. Blue Girl explains:
The problem is, the system has become corrupted and drug companies do their own “research,” get it published, and then promote the off-label uses that their “research” showed was effective. A really common one is to prescribe antidepressants for pain management. I refused to take Cymbalta along with my anti-inflammatory and pain management meds because I can not see where changing my neurochemistry would have any effect on my degraded and damaged knees. He got pissy when I questioned the wisdom of the drug makers — and I got a new doctor. Within the first five minutes of meeting him, I told him to make sure to put on my chart in big letters that I refuse off-label uses, and in fact, given that my only health problems are annoyances more than illnesses, I prefer to stick with drugs that have been around long enough to have generics available. When he found out I did some of the peer review on Rezulin, Vioxx and Baycol, he realized exactly where I was coming from.
In BG’s case, using Cymbalta would have been an annoyance, not a life threatener. But that’s not always the case, and the drug companies themselves certainly aren’t the ones who should be making that call. “A legislative fix may be in order,” says Chuck Grassley. More here.
