Might I Also Suggest Subsidized Crack For Crackheads Perhaps?
Courtesy of Jr. Deputy Accountant
Oh Big Pharma, your marketing talents never cease to amaze me. As if Crestor and the like haven’t gotten enough of a push lately with drug companies now able to market statins to those with lifestyles that might lead to higher cholesterol, British researchers have actually suggested that statins should be offered as condiments to balance the unhealthy effects of fast food.
You have got to be kidding me. Why not try keeping the Big Mac out of your mouth, fat a*s?
Patrons of fast-food restaurants may see packets containing statins next to the ketchup and salt at the self-serve counter if the suggestion of British researchers becomes reality.
Emily Ferenczi, BMBCh, of Imperial College London, and colleagues calculated that most daily statin regimens would be enough to neutralize the increased cardiovascular risk associated with eating a quarter-pounder with cheese and small milkshake every day.
Because statins are cheap, relatively safe even at high doses, and effective for reducing cardiovascular risk across patient subgroups, offering them to individuals who choose to eat an unhealthy diet against best medical advice might make sense, they argued in an editorial in the American Journal of Cardiology.
"It cannot … be reasonably argued on safety grounds that individuals should be free to choose to eat lipid-rich food but not be free to supplement it with a statin," they wrote.
A recent LA Times article wonders just how effective statins can be – it appears to me they are quite effective… at making money, that is.
As the world’s most-prescribed class of medications, statins indisputably qualify for the commercial distinction of "blockbuster." About 24 million Americans take the drugs — marketed under such commercial names as Pravachol, Mevacor, Lipitor, Zocor and Crestor — largely to stave off heart attacks and strokes.
At the zenith of their profitability, these medications raked in $26.2 billion a year for their manufacturers. The introduction in recent years of cheaper generic versions may have begun to cut into sales revenues for the brand-name drugs that came first to the market, but better prices have only fueled the medications’ use: In 2009, U.S. patients filled 201.4 million prescriptions for statins, according to IMS Health, which tracks prescription drug trends. That’s nearly double the number of prescriptions written for statins in 2001, four years after they arrived on the American pharmaceutical landscape.
Again, if the point is to make money, statins have it down. As for the rest of it, makes ya wonder…
Statins were initially approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the prevention of repeat heart attacks and strokes in patients with high cholesterol who had already had a heart attack. And used for that purpose — called "secondary prevention" — the drugs are powerful and effective medications, driving down patients’ risk of another heart attack or stroke by lowering their levels of LDL (or "bad") cholesterol.
…"There’s a conspiracy of false hope," says Harvard Medical School’s Dr. John Abramson, who has cowritten several critiques of statins’ rise, including one published in June in the Archives of Internal Medicine. "The public wants an easy way to prevent heart disease, doctors want to reduce their patients’ risk of heart disease and drug companies want to maximize the number of people taking their pills to boost their sales and profits."
So it sounds like serving up statins with unhealthy meals is a perfect idea. More money for Big Pharma, more Big Macs for the fat a*ses and absolutely no attempt to address the underlying behavior that leaves so many riddled with illness. Way to go, people, way to go.
