Glaxo Chief: Our Drugs Do Not Work On Most Patients

Independent (UK) ^ | 12-8-2003 | Steve Connor

[grania]

Conservativegreatgrandma: " Natural methods are far more effective and safer."

Sharkhawk:" You can use nuts and berries to try to treat your cancer, as for me, I will trust science and Doctors to do their best."

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I'm one of those persons who prefers natural remedies. It's very, very difficult, though, to decide which supplements to use, and any doctor I've run into is clueless.

Obviously, the percentage helped by the pharmaceuticals is just fine, for those who are being helped. Where the problems occur is when a patient is taking so many drugs it's tough to see what's doing what and when doctors don't tell patients what natural remedies would also be useful.

Last year, an acquaintance had a horrible and lethal bout of ovarian cancer. Through the whole thing there was no suggestion to eat things like tomatoes and to get outside and take walks whenever she was able. That's so typical, that many doctors treat natural healing as the enemy.

Besides that, everytime someone gets ill from a natural remedy, there's an attempt to get it off the market. Health food/supplement stores are restrained from making claims. It's all ridiculous because those of us who prefer that approach pay for our own supplements. Just have us sign some kind of no-responsibility claim.

[Conservativegreatgrandma]

The upshot of this duscussion is that we need to use our brains. Never go to ANY doctor and accept what they say as being in your best interest. We have been given a great gift in the Internet. Use it. Research. It takes time but it can be worth it.

One of the websites that helped when I was researching for my sister was Dr. Walt Stoll.

For those facing cancer, I hear a lot about Dr. Burzynski in TX. This is not a recommendation. I know nothing first hand. It's just worth researching.

[Conservativegreatgrandma]

My sister went to a DABCI chiropractor. The difference is that this kind of doctor HAS to produce results because they're subject to greater scrutiny than an MD. No one thinks anything about it when their patients die. They tried their best--too bad.

[MainFrame65]

These numbers look about right, and this is no surprise. I have read about some of the psychiatric drug tests, where the real drug was less than twice as effective as the placebo, and both were below 50 percent. Heredity does play a large part, and there are other things at work as well.

For instance, some drugs exhibit a "handedness", or chirality, where the arrangement of atoms within the molecule can have two complementary forms, like a right or left handed glove. Many of the amino acids in our cells exhibit chirality, and the ones that do are invariably left handed. The same is true for most of the many starch and sugar compounds in our bodies.

But while organic production methods may produce chiral molecules, chemical production methods usually produce molecules that are racemic, or an equal mixture of left and right chirality. But tests have proved that for many drugs, only the left (or in some cases, only the right) chiral molecules provide effective therapy. A few companies have produced chiral versions of some drugs, with excellent results, including lower effective dosages and reduced or eliminated side effects.

[RJCogburn]

DABCI chiropractor....they're subject to greater scrutiny than an MD

Educate me, please.

[trajanus_red]

The following is an FYI:

From reporter, Jon Rappoport(http://nomorefakenews.com/archives/archiveview.php?key=1705)'

First of all, it is almost unheard of that a drug company executive will admit something is wrong in his own field.

And when he admits something is VERY wrong, you have to suspect the revelation is a hoax or a misprint.

But it’s happened. The UK Independent is carrying the story, and I urge you to look for how many (how few) press outlets around the world pick it up and, of those, how many feature it or trumpet it.

December 8, 2003. “Glaxo chief: Our drugs do not work on most patients”. Author, Steve Connor.

Here are the first two paragraphs of the story:

“A senior executive with Britain’s biggest drug company has admitted that most prescription medicines do not work on most people who take them.

“Allen Roses, worldwide vice-president of genetics at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), said fewer than half of the patients prescribed some of the most expensive drugs actually derived any benefit from them.”

Here is a direct quote from Dr. Roses. “The vast majority of drugs---more than 90 per cent---only work in 30 or 50 percent of the people.”

Which leads me to the third thing you know when a drug-company pro admits sizable problems in his own industry: HE IS UNDERSTATING THE PROBLEM.

Now, as this story breaks across the world, it will be very instructive to see how far out into the public and medical community and government it reaches.

Because, from any angle you choose to look at this, it is a hammer blow.

My guess it will penetrate about ZERO INCHES into government or the medical community or the public.

And I predict the whole story will sink like a stone, as far as media pickup is concerned. It will never make headlines. It will never form the basis for a crusade against drugs or drug companies or government spending on drugs.

From this point on, the story will be carried further by this column I am writing than by any other news outlet in the world.

Of course, you can go find the Independent piece and send it out to a hundred or a thousand people, or you can copy this summary and send it out.

BANG THE ROBOTS ON THE SKULL. See if they wake up. See if they budge from their locked-in stupor.

How can I possibly say that a story like this, breaking in a fairly major newspaper, will have no legs, will disappear from view in hours? How can I say that?

Because I’ve seen it happen before. Many times.

Because I’ve worked as a reporter longer than many reporters you read in newspapers (20 years).

Because I’ve watched my own stories that explode popular misconceptions and lies sink out of view.

AS I USED TO TELL AUDIENCES AT LECTURES, IF YOU WANT GOOD MEDIA, THEN BE YOUR OWN MEDIA OUTLET.

Don’t expect anyone else to do it for you. Invent ways to get stories out. Don’t worry about feedback and opinion, just get the stories out.

If you don’t want to use your real name, make one up. Hell, make three up.

Here we have a piece that torpedoes the whole drug industry, and the quotes come from a consummate insider at one of the world’s biggest drug companies.

THE DRUGS DON’T WORK.

This is like saying, the bridge that connects New York and New Jersey just collapsed.

You’ve got millions of patients gobbling up these billions of pills all over the world, and in the face of that a drug-company exec, whose company makes billions of dollars a year, says the pills don’t work.

Here is another quote from the Independent piece: “Drugs for Alzheimer’s disease work in fewer than one in three patients, whereas those for cancer are only effective in a quarter of patients. Drugs for migraines, for osteoporosis, and arthritis work in about half the patients, Dr. Roses said.”

Now, Roses is claiming there is a reason for this enormous drug failure. It isn’t lying and cheating on drug studies, it isn’t trying to kill germs with poisons instead of building up the immune system of the patients. It’s the fact that a person’s GENETIC MAKEUP predisposes him to utilize certain drugs well and reject others.

And that opinion, dear reader, may be the most damning statement of all, because this gene excuse is the old country well they go to when they have no other option, when their backs are up against the wall.

“It’s a genetic thing, and we have to test for it. We’re working on that.”

Yeah, well I’m working on a spacecraft that’ll take me to Jupiter in thirty seconds.

If you want good background on this issue, find the out-of-print classic, NOT IN OUR GENES. It’s written by geneticists who’ve been watching their profession turn into the garbage can for every desperate explanation and bailout in the field of biology and human chemistry. The basic thesis of the book is, genes control far fewer traits and functions than the charlatans would have you believe.

NOT IN OUR GENES, by RC Lewontin, et al. Pantheon Books, 1984.

What Glaxo’s Dr. Roses is proposing (talk about blue sky) is a future in which every person will undergo a few genetic tests that tell which drugs he will benefit from and which he won’t.

My, my.

That’s like saying, if we understand how cancer genes turn on and produce cancer, we won’t have to worry about how many tons of toxic carcinogenic chemicals people are exposed to. We’ll all be able to live in a sea of benzene. We’ll just turn the cancer genes off.

People don’t “respond well” to drugs because the drugs are toxic. And because the real long-term problem is not the germs the drugs are trying to kill.

To lay this failure off on genes is a sophisticated version of blame the patient.

Dr. Roses is really doing a quite elegant little episode of damage control.

The truth is, he’s winging it completely, just as 99% of the “genetics industry” is winging it completely, raising investment capital on fraudulent promises of a brave new world.

But there it is, in black and white, a rank admission by a major drug-company executive that his whole field is a fraud and a theft.

Anybody care?


http://nomorefakenews.com/archives/archiveview.php?key=1705

[Old Professer]

Chemotherapy does not cure cancer, it merely kills active malignancies; a prolonged remission is the best one can hope for.

[Old Professer]

The ones who survived into their later years often did live better, healthier lives than our seniors today.

[Conservativegreatgrandma]

Practitioners of alternative medicine had darned well deliver or they are called quacks. If one of their patients dies, they'd never hear the end of it but someone can go to am MD, die and no one thinks anything about it.

You can do a Google on DABCI. They do lots of testing.

[reaganbooster]

There is plenty of documented medical evidence going back 50 years that proves natural remedies, such as vitamin C IV's, work very effectively. Our medical establishment and big pharm look the other way and try to discredit any information that does follow standard medical practices.
It has something to do with pieces of paper with our 1st president on it.
By the way, I do not wear tin foil hats, they spoil my hairdo. If you want to see this documented evidence, see the website, doctoryourself.com It is a wonderful source of natural cures that work for many medical conditions.
Happy surfing!

[RJCogburn]

No question that natural remedies are effective in some cases. After all, the natural remedy, foxglove, which turns out to be digitalis, was a remedy for heart disease for a very long time and is now the same thing in a purified form.

Also, no question that mainstream medicine is slow to pick up on some of the natural remedy stuff that works.

Like many things, though, natural remedies are over promoted, overhyped, oversold, just by a different group of people. Before I tried an alternative, out of the mainstream remedy, I'd check out quackwatch.com which gives good objective scientific information.

[reaganbooster]

That should be does NOT follow standard medical practices.
Sorry 'about the proof reading.

[reaganbooster]

I hate to disagree with you, as I'm not an arguing type person. Quackwatch is a drug company funded organization that has been humiliated in a court of law. See
www.bolenreport.com for a rundown on their court woes. By the way, bolenreport is also an excellent medical information website.

[Cogadh na Sith]

Considering that for a lot of the problems listed there was no drug therapy at all a few years ago, I think those statistics are quite good.

My response was more of: "Whoa, they make drugs that work for that many people for those problems?!"

Heck, I'd take the odds of taking something if I had even a chance of not having the next migraine, or pants-pissing, or whatever....

There is no 'sure thing' in this world.

[Tall_Texan]

What this means is that those of you with genetic compositions closest to rats and mice are more likely to find effective relief from drug medications.

[Tall_Texan]

Except Insulin doesn't cure diabetes.

And neither do the new oral medicines. Their job is to trick the body into not rejecting the body's own normal insulin so it doesn't try to produce still more. It's not a cure. it's a maintenance drug.