Arthritis Drugs - Be Careful With Dangerous Medicines
By: Michelle Armstrong
Now this is a very broad subject. I could literally write an entire book on this subject. There are simply too many drugs that fall into this category. There are so many reports of people suffering badly as a result of taking prescribed medication. This includes medications prescribed for arthritis. The following is just one example of this.VioxxVioxx is a pain killing drug produced by Merck. It was approved in 1999 and has been widely used throughout America and UK until September 2004 when it was withdrawn.A jury in Texas on Friday awarded a $253.4m settlement to the widow of the 59-year-old Robert Ernst who died suddenly after using Vioxx. The court heard claims that Merck had played down safety fears about the drug for an entire decade.You many consider this to be old news but it is quite clear that people were placed under unnecessary risks. The drug was prescribed to over 20 million people worldwide before it was withdrawn. Experts estimate that Vioxx could have caused 27,785 heart attacks since it was approved for use in 1999.The above is only one example of an arthritis drug that has been reported to have side effects. The more research I do the more drugs that come to my attention. There are so many reported incidents that very little searching needs to done to find a new incident.It seems as if the pharmaceutical companies are putting profits before the welfare of patients, but I'm sure this isn't something new you're hearing. To me it seems as if they are weighing up how much profit they can make in comparison to how much they expect to pay in damages to people who suffer adverse effects and so long as the profit outweighs the compensation they expect to pay out, they are willing to go ahead and launch. If I am wrong then the only other explanation I can think of is that they are simply not taking enough care in testing there products. Regardless of what the true reasons the outcome is always the same. Innocent people end up suffering.I don't think they have set out to harm us. I truly believe that scientists and doctors who develop the drugs in the labs really do want to help. However it isn't always them that make the final decision. It is the people in the board room that make those decisions and their motivations may not always be as pure.As an arthritis sufferer this is very worrying. Personally I don't want to be the unfortunate individual that does have a bad reaction to a drug. The only advice I can give to everyone out there is be very careful. Try to make sure that the drugs prescribed to you have already been widely used for a long time with no reports of serious side effects.As a result of these reports of prescribed drugs causing potentially lethal side effects more and more people are looking to alternative medicine. Natural remedies are not a new fad, if anything they are the original medicine, before everything was repackaged in a laboratory. Natural medicines have been around and practiced for thousands of years. More and more studies are revealing that there is sound scientific reasoning why natural remedies work and modern medicine is taking advantage of this by repackaging it in a bottle and selling it for a huge profit.For the skeptics out there the only thing I have to say is that you should try them at least once and see for yourself. So many people have and enjoy a much better quality of life. As you can tell I am very much in favor of natural remedies, more so now than ever as the pharmaceutical industry doesn't seem to have my best interests at heart.