Cosmetic drugs draining world’s medical resources

Have you ever taken a pill that has changed your life? Hi, I’m Dr. John Steele, and I’m here… Have you ever taken a pill that has changed your life? Hi, I’m Dr. John Steele, and I’m here to talk to you about an exciting new drug that will change your life forever. This pill makes your hair grow, makes you more attractive to women and gives you confidence. The side effects are uncontrollable anal bleeding, peptic ulcers, premature death and hair loss.

We’ve all seen the ads. A guy is having a picnic on a beautiful sunny day. A man with long, flowing hair is riding a motorcycle through the desert. A beautiful woman is jumping into a lake. Have you ever wondered what these images have to do with erectile dysfunction?

These commercials represent the new wave in American medical science. These ads are for lifestyle drugs, and they’re big business for American drug companies. Lifestyle drugs are pills and medicines that do one of two things: Either they treat man-made diseases like addiction to nicotine or obesity, or they treat cosmetic deficiencies like baldness.

Viagra was introduced to the highest sales of any drug ever released. So the drug companies have been investing ever since. In fact, clinical tests have shown that only 20 percent of research and development conducted by drug companies goes toward drugs that have been categorized by the FDA as causing a significant improvement to civilian life.

Some say that science should be used to help citizens avoid any problems within the realm of our technological knowledge. But like many of the pills these drug companies sell, there are some disconcerting side effects to this line of logic.

The United States is the richest, most able country in the world. We have resources that stretch beyond those available to entire continents. But from 1973 to 1998, no new drug treatments for tuberculosis were introduced in the United States. In an Associated Press story published in December, the federal chief of AIDS research in the United States was quoted as saying that drug companies have no incentive to create a vaccine for HIV. In fact, the total annual spending to research an AIDS vaccine is $682 million – less than 1 percent of the world’s total health costs.

Diseases that plague countries around the world have been allowed to rage out of control while our drug companies sell us three different drugs for erectile dysfunction. Cialis, Levitra and Viagra have all sold millions. Of course, that’s capitalism, and who can blame these companies for making a living, right?

But consider this. The World Health Organization published a report in 1998 stating that there were 273 million cases of malaria worldwide. A study conducted by the Kenya National Research Institute determined that recent outbreaks and exposure yield a conservative estimate of 515 million cases worldwide.

This data has increased interest in the disease, including the Roll Back Malaria campaign initiated by the World Health Organization. Its goal is to cut the numbers in half by 2010.

What about our friends in the pharmaceutical companies? With such a worldwide epidemic, they should be all over this disease, right? The truth is that before this campaign was initiated, not one of the 24 largest drug companies had an in-house research program for malaria.

Something about the way medicine is being run through corporations needs to change. The societal cost of our capitalistic medical community is hurting the world at large. Doctors must take the Hippocratic oath before they can practice. This oath states that as a doctor, one will do no harm. But when doctors and researchers believe that there is no incentive for them to create a vaccine for a worldwide pandemic, when 80 percent of funding goes toward drugs that simply treat Americans cosmetically, and when curing entire populations is put on hold to research boner pills, doctors do the greatest harm of all.

E-mail John at jrs26@pitt.edu.