Watch out for this risky treatment of a non-disease
Is this the most dangerous drug prescribed for a ‘pre’?
Last week I told you about the contagious epidemic of “pre-disease syndrome.”
Many of these “pre-diseases” aren’t even real ailments. Some can be reversed by making simple changes, and others need no treatment at all.
But one of the biggest money makers out there is pre-diabetes.
I know, it sounds scary. And then there’s a knee-jerk reflex by your doctor — one that ends up with you holding a prescription in your hand.
And that can be the scariest part of the whole thing.
The real epidemic
It’s no surprise that Big Pharma is the one profiting from all these pre-diseases.
And it especially loves pre-diabetes. That’s when a blood test shows you have higher than “normal” glucose levels, but not high enough to say you actually have “diabetes.”
Even the name is fairly new, but it’s not from a prestigious medical journal or study. It sort of popped out during a press conference held by the American Diabetes Association and the Department of Health and Human Services.
Talk about press release medicine!
But not everyone thought it was such a great idea. Over in Europe they prefer the term “non-diabetic” high blood sugar, and have asked the diabetic community to “avoid” calling it “pre-diabetes.”
Here in the U.S. though, over 79 million Americans have been dubbed pre-diabetics. That’s three times as many who are said to have type 2! How did these numbers get so high?
One way was for the ADA to make up some new figures. In 1997 it lowered the glucose numbers needed to be officially dubbed a “pre-diabetic”. That added millions more to the list. And don’t think that drug companies didn’t have a hand in all this.
The creation of pre-diabetes was a great event for one drug maker, Sanofi. It markets the world’s top-selling and most expensive insulin, called Lantus.
And it’s being rammed down the throat of “pre-diabetics” by telling them it will “delay progression” to full-blown diabetes.
Now Lantus isn’t just any insulin. It’s an especially dangerous synthetic version developed in the late ’90’s that has been linked to an increased risk of various cancers. The first reports came out back in 2009, and then again in 2011, when a study out of Sweden found that Lantus more than “doubled the risk” of developing cancer.
Think about it. A dangerous drug with numerous side effects — including cancer — taken by injection, no less, every single day by millions who don’t have an actual disease!
To give you an idea of how much Lantus is being used, it earned Sanofi over $6 billion — in 2012 alone!
But that’s not the only drug “pre-diabetics” have to worry about.
Sanofi is hard at work making another, even higher-priced synthetic insulin to take the place of Lantus when it loses its patent next year.
This new and “improved” drug has a name like something out of Star Wars: U300. And it could be coming your way soon.
The head of Sanofi’s diabetes unit is already counting the cash to be made from U300, saying it will be “a blockbuster.”
But the real blockbuster here is how many “non-diabetics” will end up on an unknown drug to treat a disease they really don’t have.
Sources:
“Manufacturing diabetes” Colleen Fuller, PharmaWatch Canada, pharmawatchcanada.wordpress.com
“Sanofi’s Lantus doubled cancer risk in study of diabetics” Michelle Fay Cortez, Bloomberg News, bloomberg.com
“Sanofi’s next-generation insulin shows edge over Lantus” Elena Berton and Noelle Mennella, June 22, 2013, Reuters, reuters.com
