Vioxx and Fosamax are killers and maimers, PERIOD!

                The Ol’ Health Educator is at it again, attacking the FDA. Loyal readers of Rajjpuut’s “A Far Better Health Care Alternative” series and his previous blogs in this Anti-FDA  series realize that the very first of Rajjpuut’s 43 tenets for an affordable health care program that would get Americans healthy, keep them that way and dramatically lower costs is to . . . . eliminate the FDA or fire all it’s employees and start over to make it a crucial part of the health care solutions in America rather than the #1 cause of health care problems in America.

                 The previous  blogs have proven that this “first tenet” is the most crucial step necessary for reforming health care in the United States. The founding principle of the preceding blogs and of this one is the simplest and most important concept in all of medicine: “First Do NO Harm!” When it comes down to osteoporosis and the health

 a. of American bones and

b. of the pocketbooks of big pharmaceutical companies . . .

the FDA has once again sold out to BigPHARMA (with another killer called Fosamax) and severely endangered the health of Americans. This time the sellout is so severe, it’s only minimally better than putting a gun to the head of osteoporosis victims. Vioxx and Fosamax are killers and maimers, PERIOD! Fosamax, if early reports hold up, is poised to eclipse Vioxx as the most dangerous prescription drug since Thalidomide (by the way, the FDA has welcomed Thalidomide back with open arms). Remember that idea of “First Do NO Harm?” Vioxx has over 60,000 deaths on its resume and perhaps two million injuries . . . so Fosamax has a big challenge ahead of them. But Rajjpuut is confident, if anybody can make Vioxx look like Vitamin C and an apple a day, it’s Fosamax.

                 Osteoporosis, is just what it sounds like: their bones (osteo-) get thin, brittle, less dense and more porous as many people reach age 50 and beyond. The problem is especially crucial for women. 80% of osteoporosis victims are female and typically the very worst cases are among women also. Male victims are almost always found among men whose lifestyle works against them: such as heavy smokers, heavy drinkers, drug users and steroid users. For women drug use, smoking and anything beyond ultra-moderate alcohol consumption is just asking for trouble. For both men and women “sodas” are a leading contributing factor: the phosphorus in many colas and other soft drinks needs to be balanced in the body and that’s done by drawing calcium from the bones. Besides leading to easy fracturing of bones, osteoporosis also causes a marked forward stoop often leading to severe back pain and sometimes deformity.

                 An enormous amount of good can be done to turn around or even reverse osteoporosis and even more good can be done to PREVENT this hideous crippling disease. Apparently our doctors and BigPHARMA and the FDA are not interested in any of this, but wisdom says this is the first place to look. The Hippocratic Oath “First Do NO Harm!” immediately tells us what to do first: STOP the lifestyle practices that bring on osteoporosis, what could be simpler? Stop drug and tobacco use; stop or severely moderate alcohol consumption. Avoid steroids and soft drinks especially colas. Very few osteoporosis victims have a healthy lifestyle. They need to immediately take responsibility for adopting that healthier lifestyle right now . . . to start a walking program or something more vigorous; adopt good nutrition; and consider supplementing with the items mentioned below.

                 The Food and Drug Administration has approved several remedies for osteoporosis but the most popular and most profitable ones are bisphosphonate bone drugs such as Fosamax and Vioxx. These drugs don’t even pretend to help nature, they do absolutely nothing to enhance normal, healthy bone growth and development but instead pose immensely grave risks up to and including crippling and death. Three percent of patients taking these concoctions develop atrial fibrillation and half of them develop serious AF leading to long-term hospitalization or death. These statistics alone (but there’s more, there’s more) implicate bisphosphonates in 100,000 to 200,000 serious injuries or deaths for women every year since roughly ten million women are taking these drugs.

                 Abnormal bone growth and “greater brittleness” (in many cases) leading to abnormal fractures and numerous cases of temporary and permanent paralysis caused by this brittleness and abnormal growth and severe back pains are a COMMON side effect of these poisons. And what will the FDA do about all this? Slap the wrist. They will insist upon stronger warning labels on the carton and in the included literature – if past performance is any clue.   So let’s get back to what SHOULD be done to treat and most importantly, to PREVENT osteoporosis by first of all doing NO HARM . . . .

                 Remember, this is a serious disease: potentially it will maim the victim for life. And if you take Vioxx and Fosamax, you’ve added greatly to your risk. But there is risk even without these medicines: hip fractures may impair ability to walk and may cause permanent disability or even death despite hospitalization and major surgery. Spinal or vertebral fractures also have serious consequences, including loss of height, severe back pain, and deformity. Osteoporosis can cause a person to stoop so far forward she'll appear to have a hump on her spine. It’s a crippler. So what’s to be done?

                 As loyal readers realize, beside panning the FDA, Rajjpuut has made a great case for dramatically enhancing the budget of and, just as importantly, the scope of the CDC (Center for Disease Control) from being the mainstay in the battle against communicable infectious disease to also taking on chronic lifestyle-caused problems like: diabetes, cancer, stroke, heart disease and osteoporosis to name only a few. Rajjpuut has said repeatedly that the CDC is by far the most effective health care organization in this country and should be put in charge of health care education via the media and of coordinating health care education in the schools as well as of chronic disease PREVENTION.

                First that health care education should teach PREVENTION, getting rid of the negative lifestyle habits that make men and especially women prone to osteoporosis. Second the CDC would teach PROACTIVITY: what are the positive things one can do to push osteoporosis potential far, far away from your life? Active lifestyle choices like dancing, walking, jogging and running, other aerobics, bounding and bouncing on trampolines or rebounders; yoga, Pilates and similar exercises; good nutrition; and supplementation with magnesium, and fish oil containing EPA and GLA are the sort of practices that will help make people perhaps 3% as likely to get osteoporosis without any dangerous side-effects and far milder osteoporosis if they do get it.

                 None of this is rocket science, but virtually all of it is news to virtually all Americans, so they take the easy way out. They trust their health to doctors who have taken on too many patients and thus can’t keep up with medical research. These doctors are getting their information on junkets sponsored by BigPHARMA and hear no dissenting voices. Their training has them relying from their days as interns upon drugs to cure every ill. Medical training in this country attacks problems primarily in stage 3 or stage 4 of the process when the process is the most complicated, expensive and potentially dangerous. “First Do NO Harm!” advocates attacking the problem long before it is a problem. 

                And remember “First Do NO HARM!” emphasis advocates as a crucial first step: eliminating the FDA, the agency created to protect our health which instead protects the profits of BigPHARMA to the detriment of our health. FDA = “Fouled-up Disaster Accelerants."

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,