Preview

Drug Companies Are Harmful To Society

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
118 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Drug Companies Are Harmful To Society
Drug companies are harmful to society. They release medications that cause severe side effects and, in some cases, death. J Bremner, MD writes, “ …One hundred thousand Americans die every year from medications they didn’t need or that they were prescribed in the wrong way.” (1). But if information is available for all to view on the negative effects of taking medications from drug companies, why keep taking them? In short, the answer is that people are desperate to be cured. Ben Goldacre writes, “We don’t care if the drugs kill us: we want them, because were dying anyway.” (137). Drug companies are unhealthy for those who rely on them and taking the drugs has many bad

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    The Medicines Company

    • 868 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The Medicines Company Case Write-Up: Terence Cho, Felipe Duarte, Aleks Loiko, Robert Shaw, and James Wang…

    • 868 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The ethical dilemma that arises from this is the people that need the drug may or may not be able to afford the medication they need to survive. Pharmaceutical companies began trying to work with the manufactures and offer the medicine to those that did not have the means at a discounted price however they were not reduced enough for many that needed the drug to live.…

    • 731 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Res 351 week 2

    • 985 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Pharmaceutical drug companies have a tendency to focus more on the sales and revenue than the research of any given product. This trend leads to misrepresentation of crucial scientific research on products. “A wide variety of research practices has been described as being used to distort the medical literature in favor of a clinical trial sponsor’s pharmaceutical intervention,” (Ross, Gross, & Krumholz, 2012, para. ).But also, not only do the drug companies practice unethical research studies, they spend money pushing products and incentives to physicians for writing the prescriptions for those drugs. That monetary value of those incentives is, often, more than the research on the drug itself. Two companies have been accused, tried, and charged for smudging results and falsifying findings for their benefit. It appears that pharmaceutical companies have interchanged the quest of treating and healing sickness and disease with the sole purpose of making money.…

    • 985 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    “We Love Them. We Hate Them. We Take Them.” by Abigail Zuger discusses the sensitive topic of prescription drug abuse by doctors. She claims in her essay that drug advertisements have become so persuasive and aggressive, that doctors are feeling the need to prescribe them to patients, even though they don’t necessarily need them. Zuger uses a personal experience from her life to illustrate her thesis for the audience. The experience was when she prescribed one of her patients a pill because she felt it would help him, and she continually told him to keep taking it, but he told her it made him feel the opposite of better. She still pursued him to take it even though his body was signaling for him not to. He ended up in the hospital from this drug, and she feels awful about the entire situation. Zuger claims the situation has opened her eyes to the real effects of prescription drugs and to listen to the patient’s body, the description of the drug. “Beware of Drug Sales” by Therese Cherry claims that prescription and over-the-counter drugs are being too aggressively advertised, persuading people who don’t even need them to take them. She claims even some doctors are persuaded by the ads to prescribe them to their patients (such as Zuger), some are even paid. She claims this is an extremely negative effect on our…

    • 1203 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Going to the doctor’s office is never a fun experience. Probing, poking, and trying to decipher what the doc writes on your prescription can be confusing, however, the most upsetting part is what goes on behind closed doors. Big Pharma, chapter 3 of Lies the Media Tells Us, explains the PR tactics of drug companies. James Winter explains these tactics used to persuade doctors to use their brand. In some cases these doctors can get free vacations, cars, front row seating for a basketball game, and a stack of cash. The doctors that respond to these tactics are completely unethical. Doctors have the responsibility to prescribe the best drugs for their patients. Although many Doctors pick what gives the best gift package.…

    • 1032 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    We are living in a era in which technological advances have made many things possible in different areas of science. Medicine is a huge area of research due to the constant struggle for more effective ways of staying healthy all the time. People need to be instantly gratified, and the technology makes it possible. However, people’s need for instant gratification often overlooks the harmful effects of medicine. Not only are health effects overlooked, people are naturally inclined to conform to what they feel is normal. In Ayn Rand’s novel, “Anthem”, people are living in darkness blindly following what everyone else is doing. This goes to show that people have and always will be pressured by conformity and social norms. Pharmaceutical…

    • 1186 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Prescription drugs are one of the main increasing costs in health care. It has an impact on the population that could not afford prescription drugs, including brand name. The use of generic and OTC (over-the-counter) drugs gave the underprivileged groups in America a better chance for purchase. People believe that the generic form of the drugs do not have the same effect that brand name drugs do. It is a concern that prescription drug addictions rise in the elderly and the younger groups who use for nonmedical reasons. The availability of drugs is one of the causes of abuse. Most people take medicines only…

    • 1538 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Adderall Research Paper

    • 1374 Words
    • 6 Pages

    In the medical field there is a heavy use of prescription drugs. These over the counter drugs can cause side effects that are ultimately worse and can cause worse ailments than the disease they are treating. I totally disagree with the use of these harsh chemicals and compounds. In past years nearly 8 out of 10 deaths in the United States were directly caused as a result of prescription drug abuse. For example, Adderall is a drug that has been classified as a type of legalized form of Methamphetamine and is among one of the most abused drugs in America, mostly used by students at universities. A study done by the Huffington post showed that millions of young people from high school age and college have been abusing the drug to help them “focus” and stay awake during exams. Adderall is a highly addictive drug and most of its heavy users don’t notice the Side…

    • 1374 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Unjust FDA

    • 1784 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Your standing in line at your local drug store, head killing you, your face feels like it’s ready to explode, and you cannot breathe if your life depended on it. In short your allergies are making your life unbearable, and you are completely out of Sudafed. When you finally arrive at the pharmacist and ask for a box, you are asked for your driver’s license and then promptly turned away. Recent laws have you waiting one more week before purchasing anything that contains pseudoephedrine or ephedrine. Disgruntled and in pain, you walk away and as you leave the store you overhear the cashier tell a customer “instead of buying a pack a day, why don’t you just buy a carton?” Right about now the FDA’s “…goal of a healthier, safer nation…” ("Overview Of The FDA Mission", 2007) does not feel so accurate. The FDA’s regulations are unjust, because they place corporate profits above consumers’ safety, ban proven natural beneficial health medications, and allow the public’s lifestyle demands to alter their mission.…

    • 1784 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The annual number of prescription painkiller overdose deaths have increased five hundred percent since 1990; but who is there to blame for this drastic increase in numbers? Doctors should be held responsible for the abuse of prescription drugs among people. At first, it seemed that doctors were not taking pain serious enough and they were failing to prescribe the right doses of painkillers to their patients. Sadly, this could have possibly started an epidemic of doctors prescribing too much medication to their patients. How did doctors go from not prescribing enough to making one of the nation's leading causes of death pharmaceutical drug overdoses?…

    • 592 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Prescription Drug Satire

    • 694 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The way we are being advertised these drugs that could possibly even kill us is only manipulating us to believe that they are the cure to all our problems, when in reality it is for their own company and financial…

    • 694 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Perspective Journalism

    • 855 Words
    • 4 Pages

    A known medication used to treat type II diabetes was recently issued a public health alert by Consumer Reports. Although there were numerous complaints and lawsuits against this diabetes medication regarding the fact that a percentage of users became ill with bladder cancer as a side effect, the Food and Drug Administration still permitted the first generic brand to be released in 2012. Is there such thing as a bargain price to lessen the effects of one concern, that an individual will willingly risk shortening their life with another? With all the drugs on the market these days I can’t help but wonder what the point is of taking something that will encourage our bodies to react in such a negative way? Then I wonder if faced with having to take something I know will make me better in one way but cause something in another matter, what conscious decision would you make?…

    • 855 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The prescription system have kept many patients in safe keeping in the past history, and continues to save lives today. Started in the 1900 prescriptions were invented, this was the start where people were able to go to their doctors, and the doctors would prescribe the right drug needed for the patient's condition. The prescription system is great because, it helps patients take the right medicine, and they are able to find out the condition of the patient (Robert 1). Some want to get rid of this system, due to the inconvenience of not being able to get their medicine at the right place at the right time (Cassie 1). While some might want to get rid of the prescription drug system, others would say that the idea would lead to more harm than…

    • 1664 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Close your eyes and envision a utopian society that has created great advancements in all aspects they’ve set out for themselves. Now, imagine that one of those very advancements has corrupted that society, sending it plunging into chaos; this is prescription drug abuse. Prescription drug abuse has affected and scrutinized the very lives of millions of Americans, escalating it from the crisis it has become, into the sovereign epidemic that will reap the well-being and structure of our society that we live in. How has this come to be?…

    • 1408 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Are we an overmedicated society? Have you ever opened your medicine cabinet, and really looked at its contents? Have you ever stopped to wonder exactly what is in those bottles, and what it is doing inside your body? Do we really need all of those drugs? These are the questions I began asking myself a few years ago, and I feel most people should be questioning these things more often. Every time that I see a new commercial or advertisement that highlights a dangerous drug and the resulting lawsuits, I have to wonder how many drugs out there are just as dangerous, but haven’t been documented yet. How many diseases are fabricated so that more drugs can be sold? We have been engineered to believe that every human emotion and condition is a disease and should be medicated. But how much is too much?…

    • 2157 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays