Big Pharma

A new study featured on MSNBC.com found that from 1996 to 2005, the number of Americans on antidepressants doubled from 13 million to 27 million, or almost 10% of the population.

According to IMS Health, in 2008 there were more than 164 million prescriptions written for antidepressants, which totalled $9.6 billion in U.S. sales. The reason this should be alarming, however, isn't mentioned in the study.

Psychologists from the University of Hull in England studied 50 clinical trials of modern antidepressants (4 Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, or SSRIs for short, were tested including Prozac and Efexor) and found that, for mildly depressed patients, they work no better than a sugar pill. Even the results of their efficacy for the most severely depressed patients were inconclusive.

As a results of the study, Professor Irving Kirsch from the university’s psychology department has stated:

The difference in improvement between patients taking placebos and patients taking anti-depressants is not very great. This means that depressed people can improve without chemical treatments. Given these results, there seems little reason to prescribe anti-depressant medication to any but the most severely depressed patients.

The bad news doesn't end there. There is a huge collection of anecdotal evidence that SSRIs cause violent episodes and increase the patients risk of suicide. For example, both Eric Harris of the Columbine tragedy and Cho Seung-Hui of the VA Tech massacre were taking or had taken SSRI's. Because a study of 2200 children on SSRIs done by the FDA found that thoughts of suicide occurred at roughly twice the rate of a placebo, SSRIs currently have the most serious type of FDA warning: the "Black Box" label warning.

All that being said, why isn't our government doing something to protect the record number of current consumers from the potentially dangerous class of drugs? In my opinion, it again has to do with the power of money in our current political system. Courtesy of citizen.org, who produced the graph seen above, here are some interesting facts about the profitability of the drug industry:

• "it was rated the most profitable industry in 2000 and has been consistently ranked number one or two by Fortune over the past few decades"
• "Fortune reports that the 11 drug companies in the Fortune 500 enjoyed rates of profitability (measured in return on revenue) that were three to four times greater than the median for all industries in the Fortune 500. Pfizer, the second-largest drug company, has seen the value of its stock increase a stunning 1,454 percent over the last decade"
• "Public Citizen found that Fortune 500 drug companies plowed 30 percent of their revenues into marketing and administration, while committing just 12 percent of revenues to research and development"
• "The largest American drug company, Merck, had profits of $6.8 billion in 2000, which was more than the profits of all the Fortune 500 companies in the airline, entertainment, food production, metals and hotel/casino/resorts industries combined."
• "The drug industry’s success in Fortune 500 profitability rankings has become a rite of spring. In the 1970s and 1980s, Fortune 500 drug companies enjoyed rates of return on revenue that were two times greater than the median for all industries in the Fortune 500. In the 1990s, the drug industry’s rates of return on revenue were almost four times greater than the median for all industries in the Fortune 500."

In an example of what happens when the lobbyists win, all you have to do is look at Medicare Part D. By getting the now famous the-government-can't-negotiate-drug-prices-with-the-drug-companies donut hole in the program, the ten largest pharmaceutical manufacturers saw a combined $8 billion increase in their profits in just the first 6 months of the program. Also, because President Bush did not fund the program, Medicare Part D added an unfunded liability of almost 9 trillion to the national debt. Let's hope they don't get their hands on the current health care overhaul...

So, to summarize: A record number of Americans are taking a medication that may or may not be more effective than a sugar pill that has the most dangerous FDA warning because of increased risk of suicide and violence while at the same time bankrupting the nation and enriching the executives of a handful of multi-national corporations.