Mar 31 2008
It’s The Disease, Stupid
Another week, another “blockbuster” designer drug that does nothing. In case you haven’t heard, recent studies have shown that stuff like Prozac does little for people with moderate (read: normal) depression. This week, we find that the popular (read: over prescribed because drug reps push it) cholesterol drug, Vytorin, fails to improve heart disease even though it reduced risk factors.
The last part is the important point. You see, we hear things like “high cholesterol is bad” and “high blood pressure is dangerous” and so on. Drug companies, doctors, the media, and every other ill-informed shmuck out there is running around worried about their High Cholesterol. Mine it too high, I have to get it down! I’m eating better, and I’ve got these neat-o pills to help me!
Now eating better and reducing the bad cholesterol is a good thing, but they’re missing the point. High cholesterol isn’t a disease.
We get so caught up with our symptoms that we miss the forest for the trees. It’s not the high cholesterol or the high blood pressue that we’re trying to avoid, it’s a freaking heart attack or a stroke. High cholesterol doesn’t kill you, a blocked artery does.
But drug companies like helping with symptoms because those are a lot easier to solve. Let’s take an example: You have a cough. JumboComboPhamaCo has just come up with a Blockbuster drug. Something that you’ll learn about in every magazine and TV commercial. Take LiCoutraCal PM and you’ll never cough again! It’s amazing, and it works. You don’t cough any more. You are cured! The only problem is, you still have Tuberculosis!
I’m not saying you shouldn’t be taking your blood pressure medicine or your cholesterol lowering drugs. I am saying is that you should be challenging your doctors. For any drug they want to prescribe, you ask these simple questions: What disease are we trying to avoid / cure? Has this medicine been proven to reduce my chances of ____ disease? I could give a flying fuck in LowCholLiveForever HCT lowers my cholesterol in 5 different important ways. I want to know if the fucking drug is going to help prevent a heart attack.
2 Responses to “It’s The Disease, Stupid”
As with most things, this attitude of mine comes from the market’s most powerful force: Money. Every penny of my healthcare comes out of my own pocket. That wonderful blood test, that will cost $250. So, I’ve become very focused on the value of my healthcase.
The doctors aren’t too fond of this attitude, even the good docs, because they are used to being able to order up any test they can think of.
Just keep asking them: What is this test going to accomplish? How is it going to improve my quality of life? If you feel it’s so important, why don’t you pay for it? LOL.
Frankly, if more patients and doctors looked at the real dollars and cents, and focused on solid quality of life issues (versus hail-mary procedures), our healthcare costs would be a heckuva lot less.
I certainly learned a big lesson–I should of had my gallbladder surgery right after I found out about it. Instead I cost my insurance company 52K on a 2 week hospital stay, several CT scans, countless blood tests, xrays, EKG’s, an ERCP, pancreatitis and an emergency surgery.
Course, everyone thought I would be ok waiting a couple of months. I even tried the hippie way of eating super low fat to hold back any bad symptoms. Bull. Shit. I was more strict than I care to imagine and all I got was worse.
That, and the stupid nurses tried to treat my pain with morphine and it ONLY MADE IT WORSE.