Ways Pharmaceutical companies are poisoning us: What would you do if you were advised to stop taking drugs? You’d probably assume we meant heroin and quickly point out that you don’t drugs. Fair enough, but that’s not what we mean: we’re talking about prescription drugs.
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The World Drug Report produced by the UN in 2014 showed that over 19 million Americans are hooked on opiods like morphine and Oxycontin. In the UK, with around 1.06 billion prescriptions written out every year (20 prescriptions a year per patient), the epidemic is just as bad. Let’s face it, the West has a pill popping problem.
Surprisingly, many doctors agree that meds may not always be the best option. So why prescribe them? Doctors claim they feel pressured to prescribe patients a drug, just to feel as though they are doing some good. Sounds crazy, right?
Then there are the whistle-blower’s reports that show that many pharmaceutical companies make it worth the doctors while to prescribe their own pills. Add these two scenarios up and and you’ll begin to see the bigger picture.
The situation is even more chilling when you realize that not all these drugs have been cleared for sale. In 2011, Johnson & Johnson admitted to bribing European doctors to prescribe their drugs to patients. The company was ordered to pay $70 million in civil and criminal fines.
Scared yet?
There’s more. The following are nine lawsuits currently being faced by some of the largest pharmaceutical companies and involving some of the most common drugs around.
9. Yaz – Birth Control Pill
Yaz (also known as Beyaz and Yazmin) is a birth control pill manufactured by Bayer and heavily marketed to women under 35. As a combined oral contraceptive pill, it is supposed to prevent ovulation from occurring, thus curbing female fertility.
Its main ingredient, Drospirenone, has been found to induce high potassium levels in the blood. Elevated potassium levels increase the risk of abnormal heart rhythms, a potentially fatal condition.
It has also been found to increase the danger of developing blood clots by up to seven fold. Despite these risks, Yaz has quickly become one of the best selling birth control pills in the market. Slick advertising and implied benefits such as mood lifting and weight loss have convinced many women to try it out.
When the dangers of drospirenone were pointed out, the FDA didn’t order an immediate recall. They instated a committee to look into the findings. The only problem was, four of the committee members had financial ties with Bayer, which they all failed to disclose.
At the moment, over 10, 000 people have filed Yaz lawsuits against Bayer, who have paid out over $750 million so far.
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