Big business is pushing politicians into peddling their pills, claims medic

DOCTORS give you medicine to make you better or improve your health, right?
Not so, according to Kentish Town GP Dr Iona Heath.
Writing in the British Medical Journal, the GP from the Caversham Group Practice in Leighton Road, has attacked government policy for promoting drugs that prevent illnesses.
She claims they are creating a scare culture that is unnecessary, affects quality of life and has disastrous knock-on effects.
And behind the government’s misguided aim of using medicines to prevent illness are drug companies pushing their wares on health policy makers, Dr Heath claims.
To sell drugs they have created a prevention culture that makes people sick with worry, she says.
Dr Heath also claims that treating the side effects of this drug use costs the NHS nearly £500m a year and uses up almost five per cent of hospital beds – drawing cash away from much-needed treatments.
Dr Heath said: “There is evidence that the more people are exposed to the rhetoric of preventative health care, the sicker they feel.”
She wants a tax placed on drugs like statin, which reduces the risk of heart attacks, and the cash spent on treatments in developing countries.
Dr Heath says: “There is excessive self-confidence of preventative medicine. The emphasis on preventative care damages patients by tipping them towards misery.
“This process is built on a foundation of fear and is fanned by economic and political pressures.”
And she says that this is partly down to a chain of pressures in forming health policy.
She said: “We need to move away from the bullying of patients by doctors, of doctors by politicians and of politicians by multinational corporations.”
The pharmaceutical industry lobbyists set the agenda for what doctors should be doing, Dr Heath claims.
She writes: “It is in the interest of the pharmaceutical industry that the majority should be persuaded that they need to take action to remain healthy by being screened and taking preventative medicine.
“How can this level of medicine taking be appropriate in a population which, by all objective measures, is healthier than ever before in history?”
And she asks the philosophical question: “As doctors, are we simply interested in postponing death?
“Should we not also be interested in reducing rather than fanning the human burden of fear and in emphasising rather than undermining health?
“It is contingency – chance, fate, uncertainty – that makes life beautiful. It is the enduring truth that we can never know what will happen tomorrow, whether or not we have taken our aspirin, that makes life thrilling.”