Ban all direct marketing of prescription drugs. I stopped watching television pretty much because there is a drug for everything normal in life.
Did you notice when they were advertising the same drug for "social anxiety," postpartum depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and attention-deficit? That was funny.
(If I had any of those, I'd probably treat them with cheap wine and pretzels :-).
I see they have lowered the goalposts for serum cholesterol again down to 100 mcg/Dl.
This should triple statin sales, and fund more suppertime TV advertising for Lipitor™ etc.
I am conviced that someday there will be a terrible reckoning concerning these drugs, and the studies that created this industry, beginning with the now-ancient Helsinki Study.
Whether one believes that the metabolic pathways chart was divinely designed, or designed by a billion years of evolution, there are REASONS for synthesizing cholesterol.
Given disruption of liver enzymes such as transaminases in some people, together with a host of other side effects like peripheral neuropathy, there had damned well BETTER be an overriding reason for this avalance of prescriptions besides absurd prices for quite simple compounds.
Otherwise the future will provide something a lot worse than the Dalcon Shield, Thalidomide, and the Schiley heart valve, and the lawyers will have a feast.
I take them. But under protest, because there is something about this whole episode that is intuitively disquieting to me.
Being normal can be considered an affliction in need of attention. ; )