Worldwide annual spending for prescription drugs has topped $600 billion for the first time ever in 2005.
The United States accounted for more than $250 billion, but the fastest growth was in emerging markets such as China, Russia, South Korea and Mexico, where sales increased an astonishing 81 percent.
New Drugs and Old
Biotech protein drugs, such as new anemia treatments, were among the top sellers in the United States, but were not best-sellers worldwide. However, the market for drugs in this category still grew 17 percent to $53 billion. Most of the worldwide best-selling drugs were traditional "small molecule" drugs.
The Next Blockbuster
The United States spent $1.9 trillion -- or 15 percent of the U.S. economy -- for "health care." The term health care is used here because that is how the media refers to it, but we know that it truly is disease care.
While $2 trillion seems like excessive that number is expected to reach $3 trillion by 2011.
What most people don't realize is that one of the primary drivers for these costs are prescription drugs. About 15 percent of the amount spent on "health care" goes to pay for drugs. The indirect costs, of course, are FAR higher.
Not only would one need to include the cost of blood tests and physician visits to monitor for potential toxicity, but you also need to factor in the damage that relying on drugs to treat disease causes.
Over 100,000 people in the United States alone die from drug side effects each year. How can you possibly place a value on human life? Aside from killing people, drugs also account for 2.2 million serious injuries per year in the United States, and 5 percent of all hospital admissions are due to a serious drug reaction.
In case you were wondering, here is a list of the most expensive drugs. Every one of these drugs can be relatively easily eliminated for 95 percent or more of the population, and some, like Plavix, should never be used for anyone. You can click on the hyperlink on the drug name for more details.
The top five best-selling and largely useless drugs worldwide, according to IMS Health:
Despite the massive global market for prescription drugs, I remain confident that replacing potentially toxic and unnecessary symptomatic band aids with safer, healthier treatments that are far more effective may be starting to take hold.
It's interesting to note that, despite the explosive growth in developing nations, drug sales in America and the other nine biggest markets worldwide have slowed to less than 6 percent.
One factor accounting for that slow growth: Just 30 new medicines were launched in key markets last year, according to business analysts, much of it due to increased scrutiny from venues like my Web site. Although that obviously isn't stopping the mega-drug companies from testing new drugs either, with those 2,300 potential drugs in the pipeline.
Without a doubt, the primary force responsible for this dangerous deception of what "health care" means is the pharmaceutical industry. The multi-national drug companies do not have your best interests in mind but rather are focused on increasing the bottom line to their own shareholders.
So it is time to start waking up our community and keying them into the massive deceptive fraud that is taking place. They can only continue this process if we allow them to. You and I have the power to break their vicious hold on the future of health, all we have to do is share the message with others.
One of the ways you can wake people up to this message is by forwarding them a copy of our clever parody on this whole scenario by giving them a link to The Town of Allopath.