How popping pills is a way to pharmaceutical paradise (or not)

By Dr Robert Lefever

PUBLISHED: 14:19 GMT, 15 March 2012 | UPDATED: 16:08 GMT, 15 March 2012


Professor Sarah Harper, director of Oxford University's institute of population ageing, says that the country's love affair with medicine means that we choose to pop pills rather than follow a healthy lifestyle.

I remember being taught to discourage the concept that we should take or prescribe a pill for every ill. Professor Harper takes this one step further by saying that we should beware of relying upon pills to keep us and our patients well.

Bravely, she challenges the belief that statins are the holy grail. My prediction is that she will get absolutely nowhere. Patients want pills and doctors want to prescribe them. The pharmaceutical industry fulfils a perceived need, as well as trying to create one.

Statins: The cholesterol-lowering driug are fast developing a reputation as a wonder drug

We have an ambivalent relationship with Big Pharma. We like the miraculous clinical advances and we gladly take advantage of them. But we are concerned that doctors prescribe too much. We buy non-prescription medicines at every opportunity but we say that it is wrong for people to be so dependent upon them. We fear for our future health but we do little to promote it. As Professor Harper says, we prefer to pop pills.

There is a simple reason for this: neither doctors nor patients want, or sometimes even know of other alternatives.

Doctors are trained to prescribe. So we should be. But we are rarely trained to do anything else. I had not one lesson on human psychology in my six years of undergraduate training. For almost all my training in non-medicinal therapies, I went to the USA.

Yet, in my clinical practice, I was very much an orthodox doctor. There was nothing 'alternative' about me. I prescribed simple antibiotics and painkillers when they were really necessary.

I very rarely prescribed sleeping tablets, tranquillizers or antidepressants. Analysis of my prescribing costs showed that they were only 40% of those of other GPs in my area of London.

I do not believe that I looked after a group of patients who were particularly well. I had 3,500 NHS patients so I saw the same conditions that other doctors saw. I simply did not use medicines as my first clinical approach.

I think that my patients were healthier as a result. Such dependencies as they may have had, did not come from me.

Equally, I was unimpressed that statins were the answer to every medical problem. I am familiar with their benefits but I am also familiar, alongside Professor Harper, with the benefits of a healthy lifestyle.

I myself do not take statins or aspirin or vitamins or anything other than the drugs that are specifically indicated for whatever I may have at any particular time.

Warning: Prof Sarah Parker said we are at risk of living in a world where people
increasingly depend on drugs like cholesterol-lowering statins

I do all sorts of things that keep me happy, active and creative. In particular, I am very familiar with the health benefits of a close personal relationship. That cannot be prescribed. Nor does it just happen. It has to be worked for.

And this is where our entire 'something for nothing' culture falls down. Figures for national expenditure on prescription drugs, over-the-counter drugs and benefits of one kind or another, show that we have created a dependent population. But are we healthier and happier?

That is the challenge that Professor Harper puts to us. If we are reluctant to take responsibility for ourselves, if we are physically and mentally able to do so, we run the risk of being hooked on the largesse of the government, the common sense and concern of doctors, and the benign efficacy of pharmaceutical products. I don't want that for myself or for people who ask for my help. I don't trust it.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2115402/Pharmaceutical-Paradise-not.html