Ethical dilemma on a cancer drug

I have been mulling this over for a few days. A woman in Texas, Andrea, with stage IV ovarian cancer wants BioMarin to allow her to receive a new drug BMN 673 which has not yet been approved for treatment. Her doctor thinks it  might help her. She hopes it will help her. She understands that it may not help her but it has helped others. There is a big debate going on.

I completely sympathize with her that she wants to try everything possible to stay alive. She and her doctor have been lobbying BioMarin to get the drug. The company is not agreeing , saying it is still in clinical trials and has not yet been proven. They could add her in the clinical trial - but she probably does not meet their criteria. It could help her but it also could mess up their data.

This is a real ethical dilemma and I hope for the best.

What I dislike about this and makes it smack of I'm not sure what. She hired a PR firm who is working for free to publicize her case. Its in the news - national and local here in Boston. She has a change.org petition going. Its all over Facebook.

I just want to say what are you thinking? That you can generate some media hype to change their mind? I was all for this woman but when I found out she has a PR firm creating the hype for her I'm not so sure.

Medication management

There is all kinds of advice out there on how to safeguard and manage prescriptions. One article I read recently even advised keeping them in a safe. I thought that was a bit of overkill but I am careful.

I have several issues with my medications. One of them is toxicity to others. My cat can't recognize a chipmunk under his nose these days but there is a family joke about the vioxx incident* that he survivied. I wouldn't put it past him to try to ingest something he finds on the floor. I am currently on methotrexate which is actually a chemotherapy drug which comes in little sealed bottles and has all sorts of warnings.

I make jokes about knowing when you are on the good drugs as they have street value. A drug addict would be very happy with the contents of my little stash. When we are going away, I hide it away a bit more than usual. I realize that if someone broke in my medicaitons would be a target - that is why they are not sitting out. Added to the fact that they would completely cover my bedside table, I needed a larger storage area for them.

I am also aware of the addictive potential of several of my medications. I am careful to think about when I take my medications, how often, and how much. I know two tramadols make me very stupid so I avoid that. I make sure I take my daily pills and use one those pill boxes with a daily box to make sure I don't forget or even take them twice (which would be a huge mistake).

Finally, every week when I fill our pill boxes I make sure everything gets filled and we don't run out. The mail order prescriptions are a pain when you run out because I need the emergency short term fill at the local pharmacy while waiting for the replacement to arrive by mail. Never mind the times I have to wait for the damn insurance companies to authorize refilling them.

I think I am just trying to be an adult here - a useful thing to do from time to time.

There is no magic pill! Sorry!

I admit I often ask my doctors for a magic wand to make bad things go away. They tell me they cannot provide it no matter how nicely I ask. There is not a magic pill, no matter what the pharmaceutical industry wants to make us think.

In a perfect world, I would like to have a magic pill or magic wand for the following: breast cancer, thyroid cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, degenerating disk disease, and fibromyalgia. None exist. So I am whing.

The use of tamoxifen to help reduce breast cancer occurrence in high risk patients is a smart idea. It is a relatively small portion of the population and something that can't really be affected by diet, exercise or other changeable activities.

But I have a real problem with the new 'brainstorm' to give statins to millions of people who are at a risk of 7% or more of having a heart attack in the next ten years. Let me just say that somewhere around half the panel of doctors who decided this were connected with the pharmaceutical industry - they didn't vote so that is supposed to make it okay. (I would assume they did make their opinions known in pre-vote discussions.)

Doctors are now going to be told to use a new algorithm: "The equation considers age, sex, total and HDL cholesterol, systolic blood pressure, blood pressure treatment, diabetes, and smoking." HDL cholesterol is impacted by smoking, weight and exercise or lack of it. Systolic blood pressure can also be impacted by the same and salt and alcohol intake.

So let's see, get off your butt, start moving, eat right, and all that stuff, or take a pill for the rest of your life and make the pharmaceutical industry rich? Hmmm.... I prefer the former option over the latter.

I am sure statins have side effects because everything will have some kind of side effect.

PS And this recommendation will impact 1/3 of Americans. The claim is they are cheap but my guess is that the insurance industry will be on the hook for a large portion of these costs.

The misled consumers - courtesy of big pharma

I wish to say a big "thank you" to Johnson & Johnson and their marketing departments for misleading so many patients and nursing homes on three of their drugs. For their efforts, they will pay $2.2 billion in fines.

"The settlement involves the schizophrenia drugs Risperdal and Invega, and the heart failure drug Natrecor, the company and Attorney General Eric Holder said. 

Johnson & Johnson and two subsidiaries "lined their pockets at the expense of American taxpayers, patients and the private insurance industry," Holder said."


You think they would have learned from their $1.2 billion in fines in 2011. Oh but they got all that money from the mislead sales they did make so that they can afford these fine.

What a business model, sell things for other than what they were approved and then use the extra money you early to pay fines and legal fees. I should go work there - maybe they would pay me for not showing up!