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Big Pharma taking over Natural Medicine?

Posted on October 29, 2009 | Author: Dr. Richard Nahas | Category: Health News | 0 Comments

I recently read a news item reporting that Sanofi-Aventis, one of the Big Five Pharmaceutical companies with a market value of just over $100 billion, has recently entered into a joint venture with a Chinese firm to manufacture and produce 'vitamin and mineral medicines', also known as Natural Health Products (NHPs).

I am not sure what to make of this kind of development, but it is definitely a major turning point in the history of medicine. The profession has been veering dangerously far from its original mandate - to heal the sick using the safest, most effective means possible - by the powerful economic forces that come from Big Pharma. Medicine has become a business, and research is now funded, interpreted and adopted largely through the lens of patentable, profitable economic activities.

This has not been all bad. One thing that big pharma is good at is making drugs that do what they are supposed to. The high standards of reliability and purity that are the norm in the pharmaceutical industry are worlds away from what currently exists on the shelves of health food stores.

Studies have documented huge differences between what many NHP manufacturers put on their labels and what they put in their pills. Some contain many times more than reported, many contain nothing at all. Some contain toxic metals, others contain cancer-causing fungal spores. This is one of the most frustrating aspects of practicing integrative medicine.

Yet I am disturbed by the implications of such heavy hitters entering a marketplace that has been largely free of regulation and restrictions.

There has already been a movement afoot to prevent people from buying NHPs on their own. In 2005, the Food and Agriculture Organization passed a resolution regulating food and NHPs called the Codex Alimentarius. This document includes many guidelines, including one stating that no herb, vitamin or mineral should be sold for preventive or therapeutic reasons, and that NHPs should be reclassified as drugs. While the guidelines are not binding, they are now recognized by the World Trade Organization as the new global standard for resolving disputes between nations.

There was an uproar in 2007 in Canada over a proposed new law that some health advocates believed was a similar kind of threat to NHPs here at home. The uproar around this proposal, named C52, led in part to the demise of the bill. The bill was designed to allow the government to remove toxic or hazardous products from the marketplace, but some were concerned that it would be used to restrict access to NHPs. The protests were loud enough that when the bill was reintroduced in early 2009 as bill C6, it was with an amendment that specifically excludes NHPs.

Nonetheless, knowing that big pharma is becoming more interested in this industry still makes me nervous. This is because their specialty is finding a way to patent and monopolize the use of medicines at huge profit. This allows them to justify sky-high prices by claiming that they are simply a result of research and development spending. They claim their costs are focused on research, when in fact it is known that most of their spending is on advertising. Money spent on salespeople visitng doctors' offices, hosting conferences, paying honoraria to 'expert' speakers - are all ways to get doctors to write more prescriptions. The most successful innovation of all has been TV ads, which once were banned but are now seen everywhere, with the familiar suggestion that you 'ask your doctor about [insert drug name here].

If you want to know more about the dirty tricks of the pharmaceutical industry, read The Truth About the Drug Companies: How they deceive us and what to do about it by Marcia Angell MD. Dr Angell was formerly the editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, the only woman to hold that prestigious position. She is one of a growing number of physicians - who have no interest in integrative medicine whatsoever - who are angrily and actively speaking out about how big pharma has led to bad medicine.

I am following this arena because we will soon be making some NHPs available to patients online. We are not keen on entering the business of integrative medicine, but we have a growing number of patients who come for treatment from hundreds of miles away, and many of them need access to quality medicines. Stay tuned.