Letter to the Editor Thursday February 21, 2013

Pricey Pills

Greg Fleming, of the Maxim Institute, in a Northland Age column questions the pros and cons of whether our health system should fund a drug which has the potential to save the lives of those suffering from a rare blood disease.

Our humanity says we should. The question I would ask is this: How come that the particular medicine required to combat this disease should cost $500,000 a year?

I believe the drug industry requires that any new drug coming onto the market should be thoroughly tested. The expense of doing so can cost $800 million and more. And nothing should be allowed to be administered until that has been done.

Who tests the testers? Each firm has its own specialists who carry out those tests. The tests are not monitored independently, and while each "breakthrough" publicises the good points of any new drug, side effects are minimalised, or not even mentioned.

Think of Thalidimide and it is said the side effects of Mefloquine is suicide.

It is on the cards that quite common remedies which may have been used for hundreds of years will be banned because they have not been "tested."

But who would want to carry out tests on natural remedies when, after spending hundreds of millions of dollars, that remedy, currently in use, can't be patented?

The quite ordinary spice cummin apparently has properties which (besides in cooking) can help considerably with certain disorders.

Moves are afoot to curtail much of what is at present sold through natural health stores. Shame!

Our pills, potions and medicines have chemicals combined, which may be worth just a few cents.

However the consumer - that is you and I - are one way or the other being duped into subsiding the pharmashoot-to-kill industry into untold wealth.

GEOFF CHURCH Kerikeri