Half of Medicines Sold in France Are Useless： http://www.france24.com/en/20120913-france-medicine-drugs-pharmaceutical-mediator-philippe-even-bernard-debre-pharmacy

Half of all medicines sold in France are either useless or dangerous, according to a book authored by two eminent French medical experts.

According to Philippe Even, former head of the Necker Hospital in Paris, and Bernard Debré, a doctor and member of parliament for the opposition UMP party, one in two medicines sold in pharmacies have absolutely no health benefit, while 5% are actively harmful.

Even told daily newspaper Le Parisien on Thursday that he and Debré had decided to conduct the study in the wake of the “Mediator” scandal. Mediator, a drug for controlling diabetes, is suspected of causing hundreds of deaths.

In their book “4,000 useful, useless and dangerous medicines” they calculate that the French state would save up to 10 billion euros a year by halting social security reimbursements on drugs they say have either no value or are outright dangerous.

They blamed “pressure from the pharmaceutical industry on government and doctors” for filling pharmacies with superfluous and unnecessary products, while the removal of discredited medicines from the market was “extremely rare”.

France is the world’s fifth-largest consumer of medicines, behind the US, China, Germany and Ireland.

The average French citizen will get through 47 medicine packs, prescription or otherwise, every year – at a cost of 532 euros per person, which equates to 12% of GDP. The state shoulders 77% of the cost.

In the UK, by comparison, spending on medicines is 9.6% of GDP.

Drug ‘totally ruined’ patient’s sex life

Drugs that came under the authors’ microscope include Zyban, once hailed as a miracle stop-smoking cure, which they say has harmful psychological side-effects that overshadow its medical value.

They also criticised “Third Generation” contraceptive pills “that are no more efficient than older ones but which give the added risk of pulmonary embolisms”.

And “Requip”, prescribed to control Parkinson’s disease, was blasted for “totally ruining the sex life” of one patient. The researchers said the drug was “under investigation”.

“We have to do a big clean-up of our pharmacies,” Professor Even told Le Parisien. “France has a huge public debt and the state can make considerable savings.

“Meanwhile in the UK, where people take far fewer medicines than us, people are no less healthy as a result.”

Even and Bebré were keen to point out, however, that while half the 4,000 medicines they reviewed were “useless”, “happily, many of the others are extremely efficient”.

“Antibiotics are the best [medical] discovery of all time,” Even told Le Parisien. “Antiretroviral drugs have given us a very real lead on AIDS and a large number of anti-cancer medicines have had an immense impact on our treatment of the disease.”

On Thursday, French pharmaceutical association LEEM said the book would “have a destabilising impact” on patients.

LEEM President Christian Lajoux told AFP: “It is dangerous and irresponsible … hundreds of their examples are neither precise nor properly documented.

“We must not forget that the state exercises strict controls on drugs. France has specialist [government] agencies responsible for the health of patients and of controlling what information is given to them [about drugs].”

評論：

我想起一個真實故事，一位醫學系的老教授，在醫學系新生第一堂課時，告訴學生，「我們醫學系教你們的，有一半是對的，另一半是錯誤的，很可惜，我們不知道那一半是對的，那一半是錯的」。

我很欽佩這位老教授的勇氣，他敢面對自己知識的盲點。而現在這位Dr. Philippe Even有勇氣指出西醫臨床上的嚴重問題，也是令人欽佩的。不過，他認為只有一半的西藥是錯誤的，這可能低估了，就像他認為抗生素是偉大的一般，抗生素的發明是偉大的，抗生素的臨床應用卻是高度氾濫，往往是錯誤的，對病人害多於利。 這整個醫療體系及思維得全面檢討，否則，人類的未來是堪憂的。