Besides being risky, this widely hyped Rx isn’t the panacea it’s depicted as

Is this the worst carnival trick Big Pharma could pull?

Dear Reader,

For what seems like forever, fibromyalgia sufferers were told, “It’s all in your head.”

That is, until Big Pharma was able to sell a pill for it. Then suddenly it popped right out of your head into a real disease.

But it turns out a lot of fibromyalgia victims would be better off without “help” from Big Pharma.

If you’ve seen those commercials for Lyrica, it looks like they found the solution for fibromyalgia — even with all the disclaimers.

The warnings about “serious allergic reactions,” and “suicidal thoughts or actions” seem less important when we see how the drug helped the people in the ads. They are going to carnivals, gardening, working again…this musical-sounding med must really work.

And if someone in your family has fibromyalgia, you might want them to talk to their doctor about Lyrica. Could this be the answer to getting them back on their feet and enjoying life again?

Many who have the disease say the answer is “no.”

And that those Pfizer ads are about as honest as a carnival shell game.
Amanda Matos is one of those fibromyalgia sufferers who has a bone to pick with Pfizer. A big one.

This California mom thinks the company, which she says has “made millions from people with fibromyalgia,” needs to make some big changes.

She once took Lyrica herself — and suffered “weight gain, bloating and blurred vision as a result.” But even with those side effects, she calls herself “one of the lucky ones” who didn’t go blind, kill themselves, or become morbidly obese.

She call those side effects “inexcusable.”

But her complaint, and a petition she recently started, isn’t about how dangerous Lyrica is.

It’s about the sneaky way that Pfizer advertises it.

She says that if taking Lyrica does help some fibromyalgia patients, the results are nothing like what’s portrayed in the commercials and magazine ads. You know, where people who have the disease are depicted going to a carnival, laughing and acting like nothing is wrong with them after taking the drug. Or where “patients” are shown visiting friends, fixing food for a party, working at a construction site and planning a community garden.

But that’s not how the drug works, according to Matos.

Even if Lyrica helps, she says, you won’t be running off to carnivals. You’ll be happy just to get enough relief so you can wear clothes for a few hours or get into bed without pain.

An honest commercial for this product, Matos says, would show someone doing things like that — not suddenly turned into a normal, active person.

But then, that wouldn’t make much of an ad now, would it?

And a truthful portrayal of Lyrica could never have lined Pfizer’s pockets to the tune of over $2 billion last year alone.

In fact, these ads, Matos says, actually make life harder for fibromyalgia patients. They can cause family members or friends to expect unrealistic things from them. And the resulting “duress” just makes their illness that much worse.

That’s why she wants Pfizer to do three things: make commercials that are “realistic,” adjust the drug “so that the side effects are not worse than the disease,” and invest some of that money they made on it into finding better treatments for fibromyalgia.

To read and sign her petition, click here.

 

Sources

“Pfizer: Help the millions of warriors battling fibromyalgia” Amanda Matos, change.org

“Are Lyrica commercials realistic?” Pat Anson, February 19, 2014, National Pain Report, americannewsreport.com