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patient health is simply not part of the bottom line. Risks and adverse effects associated with prescription drugs are hidden from public view, while drug-takers suffer. Millions of women in the US take oral contraceptives every year, yet few are aware that, as a large-scale international study, involving over 53,000 women, completed in 1996 and published in The Lancet revealed, use of "The Pill" starting in adolescence increases a woman's breast cancer risk by 60%. Yet women are told by their providers that these drugs are safe.

When the Avandia scandal broke in July 2007, US Senators accused the FDA of illicit collusion with maker Glaxo-Smith-Kline to suppress the fact that drug users increase their risk of heart attack by 43%. But Avandia is just the latest of a long and notorious list of drugs including Vioxx, Redux, and Duract that were pushed onto the market without adequate evidence of safety or in spite of clear evidence that they weren't safe. When the pharmaceutical industry is in bed with the government agency that's supposed to police it, we can't expect the consumer to be protected.

Lastly, we get a style of disease management a la House, M.D. or Gray's Anatomy. Sure, it's glamorous and sexy when a patient shows up in the ER on death's doorstep and the team pulls off a miraculous save. But what about the 100,000 patients every year who die from preventable medication errors? What about the heart attacks that never would have happened if the patients weren't on drugs known to greatly increase the risk of such adverse events? And what about the costs of waiting until the problem gets to a crisis stage before initiating treatment? We'll probably never see an episode of House dealing with those issues; if it did air, who would watch?

If we're so concerned about the cost of health care, why won't we look at what other countries are doing better and cheaper? Why aren't we looking outside the magic pill box for some remedies, instead of just arguing about who's going to pay for a system that makes billions of dollars from sickness and disease? And why don't we shake down Big Pharma for some of those elusive billions, and then use them to keep ourselves well?

Learn more about this author, Marie Davis.
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