Yellow Jacket Times - Jefferson County Public Schools

It’ Not Always Your Choice
Antwone Sloss
People fear the doctor office, not because of the bad news
they may receive, because of the bill they will receive.
When Americans go to the doctor for their routine checkup, they feel as though they are
in good health. The doctor routinely focuses on 3 things. The first is that they are
overweight, but who in America isn’t? The second thing the doctor tells the patient is that
they are in need of a new vaccine to protect them from either a new or ancient disease that
is plaguing the world. The last thing the doctor says is to ask if the patient chooses to
receive the vaccine or choose to cope with the horrendous consequences if they don’t.
These side effects can be swelling and redness of the eye, stomach aches, cramps, tingling
and irritation to the skin, difficulty breathing, fever, dizziness, tiredness, sweating, muscle
pain, insomnia, earache, nausea, diarrhea, and other flu-like symptoms that the medicine
is supposed to treat or prevent the patient from having. As Americans, we’re supposed to
have the best medical care of any country in the world, but how can this be true when we
have corrupt government agencies, doctors, and pharmaceutical companies trying to get
our money?
Who is on the TV telling you that you need a new hip replacement or a new medicine to
stop the inevitable disease you are positive to get. Is it a doctor, or a money hungry
company paying a doctor to tell you vague facts? If a commercial tells you 60% of all
people over 50 need a hip replacement, did they survey 1000 people or just 10 people
they found limping down the street. Medical companies try to draw in vulnerable people
in hopes of getting a portion of the 200 billion dollar a year American drug industry.
These vulnerable people include the elderly who are trying to lengthen their lifespan,
woman who want to get procedures done to their body parts, and men who are insecure
about their private area.
Medical companies lure us into buying unnecessary drugs and medical supplies, with
phony statistics and results, in exchange for our paychecks. A prime example is the male
enhancement pill companies. These companies charge men extraordinary prices for these
pills in exchange for improving their love life, but is this reward worth the risk? They
don’t tell these frantic men that, in return for their money, they will also have the
opportunity to receive irregular heartbeats, hearing impairment, restlessness, poor vision,
and sleeplessness, as well as seizures and an agonizing death.
When you hear the word generic, you think cheap. When big time drug companies hear
generic, they think expensive. While we buy generics to save a little money, big
manufactures spend their money trying to get rid of them. We buy the generics of a
product sometimes, but why don’t we buy more generic medicines? The reason we don’t
buy much generic medicines is because big drug companies spend their money to say that
there product contains the more quality ingredients, and will prove to be more beneficial
to us if we are willing to spend more money.
It can take decades for a
brand-name drug to
become available as a
generic. The initial patent
life of a new drug is 20
years, but a patent can
be obtained at any point
in the drug-development
stage. If a patent is
obtained early, research
and development time
may eat up a decade or
more of patent life before
the FDA approves the
drug for use. A patent
obtained later in the
development process
may buy more time for
the drug to be sold under
patent protection.
When two or more
generic manufacturers
make a drug, the price of
the generic drug is often
about 50 to 95 percent
less than the cost of the
brand-name drug. The
extent of the price drop
usually depends on how
many manufacturers
make the drug and how
difficult the drug is to
make.
it doesn't hurt to ask your
doctor or pharmacist if
there's a generic
alternative to any name
brand drug you're taking.
Source
Little do people know, the FDA, (which all of us hear every day but don’t know what the abbreviation stands for) requires
generic drugs to have the same quality and performance as brand name drugs. For the math whizzes, this means that
Generic Drugs are greater than or equal to name brands. So next time you go to the store for cold medicine, it would be
smarter to buy the $5 Walgreens Cold and Flu medicine, instead of the $13 Vicks Nyquil.
References:
http://www.cdc.gov/
http://www.fda.gov/
http://www.mayoclinic.org/medical-edge-newspaper-2012/feb-03b.html