Two interesting drugs stories for you today. First, the Sunday Express ran a story about the proposal that GPs are to be paid incentives for prescribing statins to more and more people – against the advice of doctors who feel they are of no help to low-risk people and many are worried about the side effects (mostly muscle pain, and I have seen this many times in-clinic).
Klim McPherson, professor of public health at Oxford University, said: “This is shocking. Incentivising doctors to dish out drugs to patients who may not benefit and more importantly may suffer side effects is wrong and unethical.”
I couldn’t agree more.
The second story is from The Telegraph. A pharmaceutical boss is suggesting there that over-prescribing is not the real cause of antibiotic resistance, rather the lax controls of manufacturers in China and India that allow antibiotics to leach into the water supply is the real issue. Interesting; I hadn’t thought of that.
The Dutch Pharmaceutical boss said:
“Poor controls mean that antibiotics are leaking out and getting into drinking water. They are in the fish and cattle that we eat and global travel and exports means bacteria is travelling. That is having a greater contribution to the growth of antibiotic resistance than overprescribing.”
Antibiotic resistance is now estimated to contribute to more than 25,000 deaths every year in Europe alone.
Read the story here.
What is the world coming to? When getting an actual referral to an actual allergy specialist is almost impossible though would be really useful, something that may even be harmful if useless is being incentivised. What a nonsense. But nothing surprises me these days.