Balanced Approach to Pharmaceuticals


By Joseph Serio R.Ph. Registered Pharmacist

As we race towards the new millennium the focus in healthcare is taking a dramatic shift as many individuals realize that the best medicine is a combination of the old with the new, the east with the west, or in other words holistic care. For too many years most of us have relied on our western practitioners to treat us for what ails us thinking that we were getting the finest medical care in the world. We now know that is wrong and it is wrong for many reasons.

First and foremost , less than 100 years of laboratory medicine is not going to replace tens of thousands of years of evolution when it comes to keeping us healthy. A question might be why is it that we got to the point where we thought that a pill would cure all our ills? And the answer to that is the Pharmaceutical industry in there insistent education of the doctor's, pharmacists, and nurses, as to they have the cure for all our medical problems. Don't get me wrong, pharmaceuticals have a valuable place in our society; in the hierarchy of things they are in the wrong position.They should be the last resort in illness, NOT the first resort as is the common practice.

There are a world of holistic interventions for many diseases that can minimize the need for medication or in many cases eliminate it. The patient of course have to be proactive towards their own health and have a desire to modify there behavior, environment, physiology, etc. in order to correct the situation. That leads us to what I perceive is happening today as more and more people are reading, attending classes, seeking out alternative practitioners, taking nutritional products; all in an attempt to address the underlying causes in there disease state and not just symptomatic care.

How did the Pharmaceutical industry get to become the leading educator for disease in this country? Money. Due to the strength of our patent laws in the United states when a pharmaceutical company develops a drug they have 17 years with the exclusive rights to make and market the drug. This can translate in the drug being worth billions of dollars (that's not a typo) to the company. How this all translates into the education of our medical practitioners is with that kind of money available the industry has very deep pockets to be the major sponsor of seminars and provide major funding for hospitals and medical societies were the educational process takes place. This in it's own right is not inherently bad, but it paints a one dimensional picture as to what is indicated in care. The bottom line is a drug or treatment can't be patented or it looses it's patent then it is no longer preached as a method of care. I've seen this countless times in my practice as drugs lose their patented status they become a non entity in the health care arsenal as the drug companies push newer patentable medicines that in many cases are no more effective than the older treatments, but processing that coveted patent.

Many of you probably wonder why is it that natural substances such as nutritional products aren't used more in the medical practice and the answer is if a substance is found in nature it can't be patented. If it can't be patented then there is no one spending money to educate practitioners as to its use. Again even in medical circles that is changing as groups of doctors, pharmacists , nurses and others are self educating themselves towards the use of natural substances. A doctors group that is on the leading edge is the American Society for the Advancement of Medicine.

A pharmacist group (of which I belong) is International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists. One of our particular interests is the use of natural hormone replacement therapy which again are non patentable substances that are bio-identical to what is found in a women's body that are used in menopausal replacement instead of a hormone derived from a horse source such as PremarinŠ.

In my next column which by the way will appear monthly through this publication I will elaborate on the use of Natural Hormone Replacement Therapy as an alternative to Traditional Hormone replacement therapy and the benefits that it provides.