Heart docs back Vytorin

Each and every time a doctor writes a prescription he is performing an experiment on his patient. The doctor may have an educated guess as to what those risks are from his prior experience, the experiences related by his colleagues and from peer review medical journals, however, while some side effects are relatively infrequent and/or minor, others can be fatal, or alter blood pressure severely causing a stroke, or can cause severe or fatal kidney or liver damage that cannot be repaired. Other side effects reported may have included erectile dysfunction, cataracts, alter the flavor of foods, tinnitis, double vision, constipation, headaches, urinary retention and so forth. There are drugs in common useage that cause deformities in an unborn child, and so on.

Nobody knows, or can predict what will happen to this patient with this dose at this time. This is why prescription drugs should only be used under the close supervision of a physician who can follow the patient and do adequate blood tests when necessary. A drug taken for years can have different effects as the patient ages or becomes pregnant. Patients take drugs or vitamins or herbs for different purposes that interact with a prescription drug and an unexpected or new side effect can occur. Allergies, drug resistance, drug intolerance, drug rash, drug interaction with other drugs the patient needs and so many other problems that it is impossible to explain here. Yet your doctor has to decide for you as to what is the best course of treatment for you.

Sometimes, when a patient becomes intolerant of a particular drug the doctor tries another drug from the same classs of compounds as the drug that caused the problem, however, in many casses the second drug has the same side effecrts as the first. On occaision, the second drug, even though it is related to the first turns out to be better than the first. This happened to me. I had crippling side effects on a particular anti-cholesterol drug that were so severe I had to be taken off the first one, lucky for me, the second one turned out to be better than the first and lowered my cholesterol lower than the first. This is probably the best reason to keep government out of the drug marketing business. Every drug marketed has some value and it is impossible to know in advance how implortant it will turn out to be. There are numerous drugs that came to market with the best intentions but had to be withdrawn later after severe side effects surfaced when used on a large scale. Other drugs have been around for trillions of doses, like aspirin, and new uses are still being discovered.

When a drug company markets a new drug related to an older drug, that is used for the same purpose, they are taking a big risk because there is no way to tell how well the new drug will do in the market and the cost of marketing is so high that it would be ridiculous to throw good money after bad. It would be better for government to avoid interfering with the marketing process because of the risks involved.