Consumer Reports Will Rate Drugs

[Khephra]

WASHINGTON -- Consumer Reports will begin comparing the effectiveness and cost of a few types of widely used prescription drugs, giving consumers the same type of analysis now provided on such items as refrigerators and cars.

Unlike the nonprofit publisher's other products, the Consumer Reports Best Buy Drugs Web site, to be unveiled on Dec. 9, will be free.

http://www.newsday.com/news/health/wire/sns-ap-best-drug-buys,0,4662638.story?coll=sns-ap-health-headlines

[indigolady]

1. It amazes me. . .

that the drug companies have managed to make people believe they need to be drugged to be okay, not to mention outright addiction!

Just look at the over the counter drugs at Save-On for cold and cough medications. The shelves are stocked to overflowing with the bright red and purple packaging. I wonder who buys all that stuff? I don't. Are Americans walking around drugged all the time? It just amazes me that they can get so upset over medical marijuana that appears to help some people suffering for diseases, but doesn't bat an eye about Viox killing thousands of people while the manufacture knew it was dangerous. ( and I am not a pot user, nor would I recommend it for non medical uses.)

I just wonder if that is part of the plan for the right wing corporations to take over. First they get the population dependent on drugs, then they raise the prices, then they get a phony candidate that only drugged out fools would vote for...and they've taken over America and the world.

Just another paranoid rant.... I've gotta get off this forum.

[yardwork]

2. I'm right there with you - please don't leave!

I'm even in the health field and I agree with you. Medications save lives, but we are overflowing with an unnecessary and actually harmful abundance of meds and pseudo-meds available to the wealthy and insured, while the millions of uninsured can't get access to the life-saving medicine they need.

[Robert Oak]

3. It's disgusting & on Medical Marijuana...

in general anything that is a plant they repress because they
cannot obtain patent rights.

There are a series of beneficial plants, Stevia, Red Yeast Rice,
Pot, some plant that staves off hunger and so on that these
nasty evil multinationals repress because they can't get any patent rights.

Just how bad is it all?

Well, Monsanto has made the "terminator" plant, which the seed from the 1st generation plant will not grow.

Mainly in GMO seeds, but you can see what they are doing...

they want to control all seed purchases so farmers cannot save the
seed from the crop for the next years crop.

What's so evil? Can you imagine if this terminator plant gets out
and cross fertilizers with regular seeds?

We could potentially have mass plant genocide...the world's food
the world's seed could stop reproducing itself.

I'd claim these multinational for profit corporations as entities
need to be stopped absolute...

we must redefine them to be accountable for the public good instead
of this sociopathic definition we have now.

[vptpt]

5. Well said, my friend

[sandnsea]

4. Prozac Stock Bubble

I read an article after the bubble popped that posed the idea that if so many Americans weren't on anti-depressants, the bubble wouldn't have soared so high and more people would have paid attention to the warnings. Could be I guess.

Personally, I think they're doing the corporate take-over with fast food. High starch, low protein, no vitamins. Isn't that the brainwashing diet?

[TahitiNut]

7. What with monstrous overproduction of both OTC and prescription

... drugs, it's an abomination. Not only are people breeding antibiotic-resistant pathogens in their own bodies by abusing antibiotics, I shudder to think of what the discarded medications are doing to the environment, even excluding "medical waste."

[Wordie]

6. This is VERY good news. The FDA should be doing this instead of rushing

drug approvals. I understand that even the highly regarded journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine have in the last years lowered their standards for publication of drug study results, allowing publication of studies that don't meet the older, more rigorous standards. It leaves a person wondering where it is even POSSIBLE to get unbiased information.

This is a very good move on the part of Consumer Reports. If the drug companies are smart, they will realize that if they keep having serious problems with medications such as Vioxx, they will eventually lose all credibility, and so lose money as well. Consumer Reports is actually doing those companies a favor!

[maxsolomon]

8. the verdict: its all good!

drugs are good. unless they're illegal. then they're bad.

the more drugs you are on the better american you are. seniors, i'm talking to you.

[TahitiNut]

9. "Better Living Through Chemistry!"

"God's children" apparently have a congenital weakness that's only ameliorated by a witch's brew. :evilgrin: