Half of drugs prescribed in France useless or dangerous

Half of drugs prescribed in France useless or dangerous, say two specialists.



Half of all prescribed
drugs are useless or dangerous, two leading French doctors claim in a
new book. Photograph: Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty Images

Half of all medicines being prescribed by doctors in France are
either useless or potentially dangerous for patients, according to two
eminent medical specialists. They blame the powerful pharmaceutical
companies for keeping these drugs on sale at huge expense to the health
system and the taxpayer.
Professor Philippe Even, director of the prestigious Necker Institute,
and Bernard Debré, a doctor and member of parliament, say removing what
they describe as superfluous and hazardous drugs from the list of those
paid for by the French health service would save up to €10bn (£8bn) a
year. It would also prevent up to 20,000 deaths linked to the medication
and reduce hospital admissions by up to 100,000, they claim.
In
their 900-page book The Guide to the 4,000 Useful, Useless or Dangerous
Medicines, Even and Debré examined the effectiveness, risks and cost of
pharmaceutical drugs available in France. Among those that they alleged
were "completely useless" were statins, widely taken to lower
cholesterol. The blacklist of 58 drugs the doctors claimed are dangerous
included anti-inflammatories and drugs prescribed for cardiovascular
conditions, diabetes, osteoporosis, contraception, muscular cramps and
nicotine addiction.
The Professional Federation of Medical Industrialists denounced the doctors' views as full of "confusions and approximations".
"This book is helping to alarm those who are sick needlessly and risks leading them to stop treatments," it saidin a statement.
Christian
Lajoux, the federation's president said: "It is dangerous and
irresponsible … hundreds of their examples are neither precise nor
properly documented. We must not forget that the state exercises strict
controls on drugs. France has specialist agencies responsible for the
health of patients and of controlling what information is given to
them."
Professor Even told the Guardian most of the drugs
criticised in the book are produced by French laboratories. He accused
the pharmaceutical industry of pushing medicines at doctors who then
push them on to patients. "The pharmaceutical industry is the most
lucrative, the most cynical and the least ethical of all the
industries," he said. "It is like an octopus with tentacles that has
infiltrated all the decision making bodies, world health organisations,
governments, parliaments, high administrations in health and hospitals
and the medical profession.
"It has done this with the connivance,
and occasionally the corruption of the medical profession. I am not
just talking about medicines but the whole of medicine. It is the
pharmaceutical industry that now outlines the entire medical landscape
in our country."
The French consume medication worth €36bn (£29bn)
every year, about €532 (£430) for each citizen who has an average 47
boxes of medicine in cupboards every year. The state covers 77% of the
cost; in Britain spending on medicines is around £271 per person. "Yet
in the UK people have the same life expectancy of around 80 years and
are no less healthy," said Even.
The authors were commissioned by former President Nicolas Sarkozy to write a report over the Mediator affair,
a drug developed for diabetes patients but prescribed as a slimming
aid, that has been linked to the deaths of hundreds of patients who
developed heart problems.
However, Even accused the industry of
having a get-rich-quick attitude to making medicines and said it was
interested in chasing only easy profits. "They haven't discovered very
much new for the last 30 years, but have multiplied production, using
tricks and lies.
"Sadly, none of them is interested in making
drugs for rare conditions or, say, for an infectious disease in
countries with no money, because it's not a big market. Nor are they
interested in developing drugs for conditions like Alzheimer's or
Parkinson's disease because it too difficult and there's not money to be
made quickly.
"It has become interested only in the immediate, in
short term gains. On Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry is third
after petrol and banking, and each year it increases by 20%. It's more
profitable than mining for diamonds."
Asked to explain French
people's apparent dependence on medication, Even said: "For the last 40
years patients have been told that medicines are necessary for them, so
they ask for them. Today we have doctors who want to give people
medicines and sick people asking for medicines. There's nothing
objective or realistic about this."
He added: "There is nothing revolutionary in this book. This has all been known for some time."

•
This article has been corrected to amend the figures given for health
spending. The original article gave overall health spending figures and
not spending on medicines.


Source:-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/14/french-doctors-drugs-useless-dangerous