Medications: The Easy Way to Avoid Real Change

Are we taking the easy way out?
Are we ignoring the real problem as long as we can shift the burden or consequence to someone else, or a later date?

I'm thinking of all the medications out there used to treat symptoms of poor life choices.
If the problems are due to smoking, drinking, unhealthy diet, lack of exercise, infidelity, overworking, etc... and a drug makes the symptoms better - are we just removing the pressure needed to make difficult personal changes?


Instead of using the fundamental solution: Changing our lifestyle; are we settling for the symptomatic solution of medication?

I understand the healthcare costs.  I know how much needle exchange has decreased disease and it's treatment in IV drug users.  I've seen people who work 80 hours a week function for years with the help of stimulants.  I have seen obese people saved from the catastrophic results of high blood pressure and diabetes.

These are good things.  But is good the enemy of great?  Are we sacrificing the crucible, the pressure needed to make us change our lifestyles?

Thalidomide - The "Other" Half of Every Medication

50 years later - the makers of Thalidomide have finally apologized. (News article here)

Over 10,000 babies were effected, most of whom died in early childhood.  Those that survived had debilitating defects, like the famous "flipper babies" whose arms were nothing more than little nubs.

Is late really better than never, or does there come a time when it's so late it's just patronizing and pointless to apologize?

There are a small number of victims still alive today.  Their mothers took the drug to treat morning sickness.  They didn't know that only half of the drug treated nausea, the other half caused birth defects. 

That's what this post is about - the "other half" or "mirror image."

Has anyone ever taken Prilosec - and then been switched to Nexium?
How about Celexa switched to Lexapro?
Zyrtec to Xyzal?
Ritalin to Focalin?
Provigil to Nuvigil?
Effexor to Pristiq?

They are the same medication as before - but now you're only getting the half that works.

Have you read the generic names?

All they did was add a prefix to the same drug name. 
They just added "levo," "es," "dex," "ar" or something like it to the beginning of the name.

Citalopram (Celexa) was replaced with Escitalopram (Lexapro).
Venlafaxine (Effexor) replaced with Desvenlafaxine (Pristiq).

Why?

When any chemical compound is made - it's possible and even likely to really make two different molecules - they're just mirror images of each other.  Like your left and right hand.  They're called enantiomers.  The mixture of the two is called a racemic mixture.

When medications are made - they often don't worry about whether they are making one compound or both.  The mirror image usually does nothing anyway, and it's cheaper if you don't have to separate the two.
They test the drug, and if it works they produce it.

That was the problem with Thalidomide.  One molecule treated nausea - it's mirror image caused birth defects.  The drug company gave people the mixture.

Even if they had done the extra work to only make the one molecule that worked - there still would have been birth defects because with thalidomide - one mirror image can mutate and become the other one in our bodies.  We were doomed either way.

So what's happening now?  Are any drug companies making NEW drugs - or are they all just relabeling the half that works - and selling it pure instead of mixed?

Anyone taking (Synthroid) Levothyroxine? 

Why didn't the drug company make Dexthyroxine instead?  - because that's the half that didn't work.

We rarely get NEW drugs anymore.  It costs too much to test a drug when you have no idea if it will actually get FDA approval.  But if you know the drug already works - just produce it pure without the mirror image - and you've got another 7-12 years of profits for the new medication.

Thalidomide showed us the horror of not understanding our own science.  Have we really learned the lesson, or just learned how to profit by it?