Welcome to the Humiraverse

August, 15, 2013 | 9 Comments

Comments

  1. Just a technical note: Cynthia DiBartolo’s suit is actually against Abbott Laboratories, which spun off its drug division in January 2013 creating AbbVie Corp. Abbott was in charge at the time she took Humira. However, AbbVie is the successor to all the Humira promotion activities pre-2013 and continues them today, so I called the company “AbbVie” throughout.

    With $2.6 billion in sales for the first quarter of 2013, Humira is on target to reach sales of $10 billion this year, a world record. The stakes are high, both for AbbVie’s profits and patients’ lives.

  2. Anti-depressants, a parallel situation, are at world records highs for the most prescribed.

    Doctors have been warned repeatedly to stop bringing out the prescription pad.
    They are not doing this.

    We are in the midst of a cliff-hanger; do doctors, repeatedly prescribe drugs they know nothing about and force upon the patient, or do patients try and talk to the people that make these drugs.

    If, I was a young enthusiastic individual with more energy, I would almost have a revolution – a revolt.

    I would organise every single person with an adverse reaction to a prescription drug, all over the world, to communicate their adverse event to the manufacturer of said drugs.

    I would then send in a reporter.

    I would just cut out doctors all together…..

    I never thought the word genocide would occur to me, either, enough of that with the Jews, but is this really happening? OK, this is not mass genocide, but would you not think that perhaps 2 in 100, or whatever the stats are, the manufacturers would step in, to, perhaps, even discuss it.

    The silence is deafening……I was not herded into a bus on my way to be gassed, but I was herded into a terrifying situation, by my doctor……. is silence a fabulous way to deny this?

    Do we understand why pharmaceutical companies refuse to talk to us, I think we understand very well….

  3. AbbVie appears to play an identical marketing game with Crohn’s patients. The commercials appearing on TV in the U.S. for Humira are almost identical for Crohn’s and psoriasis. The entire marketing of drugs via “patient advocacy” is appalling.

    • I took Humira for 5 years. I am now battling three cancers. The two worse cancers are Lymphoma which started out inside my heart. At the same time I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, and breast cancer. The lymphoma has become aggressive so I am on aggressive chemo treatments. I do not have a lot of money and my bills are going up because my insurance doesn’t always cover my treatments and/or tests. I am widowed and not able to work as I am to tired after al the treatments. I really wish my Dr. would have explained the side effects better. She just grazed over them like these never happen. Now I am living day to day and don’t know what to do. I check with several Attorneys, but no one is taking on Humira anymore.

  4. Ken, it’s all a marketing game.

    If you sit in front of a doctor, and it’s different for me because I live in the country and doctors here have more time, here, than you think.

    You sit in front of the doctor and you explain all the horrific symptoms which are happening to you and they, are, not polite, not understanding, not actually very interested. But, a certain civility prevails.

    And, then, behind your back, referrals are sent off. Pages of denigration of your character.

    This strikes me as two-faced and trickery.

    You are not told that they are doing this, behind your back.

    I was even invited to stay with my doctor for a week on the Isle of Bute, with my daughter, and when I read all her referrals in my medical records, I am shocked at her hypocrisy, ingenuity and audacity that she played with me like this.

    It’s not often you come up against a lying, scheming doctor, and mine took the biscuit.

    But, is it morally defensible that doctors are writing dangerous words, in your medical records for perpetuity, but, being, pleasant to your face.

    Facebook is full of internet trolls, at present, targeting little children and teenagers, with bullying, but is it right and proper that a ‘trusted individual with status’ is sitting right next to you and, perpetrating, the same sort of ‘trolling idea’ with some sort of fixation that she is doing you good.

    Is this their duty of care and attention?

    Is it credible that doctors do this, day in and day out?

  5. Ken, as someone who has been enormously helped by legit volunteer “peer-to-peer” work, on the giving & receiving end, I agree it’s horrible to see it hijacked & perverted for drug marketing purposes. Check out these PR firms:

    http://www.phperspectives.com

    http://www.hastrategies.com/experience.html

    Looks like these are the people behind the (extinct) Humira Mentors Program! I love the endorsement of HAStrategies by an industry client: “I can always count on HAS to deliver exactly who I need.” “Harnessing patient passion… ” indeed. Harnesses are for beasts of burden aren’t they?

  6. As a practitioner of Alternative Medicine (Acupuncture) it is been my repeated and disheartening experience to see the effects of this debacle.
    In fact, one of my first patients many years ago was a 17 year old boy, brought to the clinic by his father. As it turned out, the boy had a form of social anxiety, for this his physician prescribed Cymbalta. When he told me this, I nonchalantly asked what warnings the physician gave him in regards to side effects, ‘nothing,’ he said ‘he just said to make sure not to skip a dose.’
    It should be said that the boy came to the clinic because he had been suffering from suicidal ideation (with intense litigation at the time), tachycardia (also a listed side effect) and an increase in social anxiety as a result of these ‘side’ effects.
    I would like to say that this case was rare, but in fact, I would say it is the norm as there appears no consequence for a lack of proper informing by physicians or the industry.
    In the modern age we see the myopic discussion concerning only trials, for me, in my experience, this is far more concerning and far more damaging than whether a drug or supplement was shown to be efficacious against placebo.

  7. It would be a great thing if health care professionals were ‘allowed’ to develop wisdom in their practice. The body heals itself, not surgery or medication. For example stitches may help a good healing of a wound but it is the body itself that knits back the tissue and skin and bone. No healing can happen without the body’s systems being allowed to work and they need fresh air, sunshine, good food, peaceful sleep, and exercise within the bounds of possibility.
    Hospital tends to provide drugs, recycled air, dubious food, disturbed sleep with changing light, alarms, clatter of new arrivals or incidents on the ward and little exercise, taken mostly indoors. This costs a fortune compared to the provision of a convalescent home or holiday that might really help a body to recover health and spirits.
    The constant searching for problems in children and adults, the screening which allows healthy people to be diagnosed as needing treatment, has engendered a feeling of fear with regard to health so that our expectation is no longer of a life of health until we get old, but of a long career of treatment and frailty ending in early death for those who take the most drugs or treatments such as radio therapy. I’m not saying they can’t ever help, but they are too much used before the simpler ways of healing are tried.
    The tempting of medical practitioners into harmful ways is not helped by the fake science that is published as research, funded openly or covertly by big pharma, and the huge amount of good research that is suppressed and never heard by the public.
    The conspiracy is to suck money from the tax payers to the super rich tax avoiders.
    Our freedom to refuse treatment is also coming greatly under threat.

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