Pharmaceutical giant Wyeth is trying to make your influence disappear. You see, Wyeth has a problem: 50, 000 irate consumers who have written comments to the FDA to make it clear what they think about Wyeth throwing its weight around and using the FDA to shore up their failing market in deadly synthetic hormones by making safe, natural bio-identical ones illegal. The response was so strong that they actually amended the original Citizens Petition to try to make it seem as if they were not doing exactly what they were doing: trying to kill a natural health option to protect their market share for a group of dangerous and ineffective drugs. And, as long as they were at it, they decided that they would kill the profession of compounding pharmacy. Those are the specially trained pharmacists who custom make personalized prescriptions for patients on the order of their doctors. Instead of counting out pills into bottles, they compound exactly what a particular patients needs.

Since compounding pharmacists can create what a patient needs, not what a big company decides to market, these advanced pharmacists are your doctor’s partners in bringing safe, natural and personalized formulations to patients. Millions of women depend on their skills to provide their individualized doses of the natural female hormones which they need. Many of them used to take synthetic hormones like Wyeth’s Prempro (C), imitation progesterone mixed with Wyeth’s horse urine (honest!) from pregnant mares, Premarin (C).

For many years, the dogma of conventional medicine was that menopausal women needed to take hormones and stay on them for the rest of their lives since doing so would prevent the heart disease which so often afflicts women after the end of their reproductive years. It was also supposed to protect them from senile dementia, Alzheimer’s Disease, osteoporosis, wrinkles, dry mucosa (especially vaginal dryness) and on and on and on.

Remembering to forget that hormones are tiny molecules which act at ultra low concentrations on every single cell of the body and that they are highly structurally specific (so a single atom’s difference could mean the difference between safe and wildly dangerous), doctors pushed with all their might for women to take structurally altered synthetic hormones made by companies like Wyeth. The fashion — or perhaps the rage — as to get women on the synthetic versions and either dismiss or skip any mention of the natural alternatives which some doctors prescribed for women. These natural hormones were prescribed by a small number of doctors who understood the importance of using molecules which are identical to those that nature makes inside the body. Patients appear to experience fewer side effects from taking them and, critically important, fewer deadly problems like cancer.

But natural molecules cannot be patented so they are quite cheap. And natural molecules therefore do not generate the revenue to create fancy advertisements and expensive medical courses and glossy brochures, and expensive dinners for doctors and desk toys and calendars and pens and attractive drug reps and trips and…. and…. and …. In fact, even compounded for each patient, they are still considerably cheaper than synthetic hormones.

And then the 2002 shock that sent millions of reeling women looking for a doctor who knew how to prescribe natural hormones: a huge 15 year National Institute of Health study involving 168,000 + women called “The Women’s Health Initiative”, designed to establish the protective impact of Wyeth’s synthetic hormones Premarin (c) and Prempro (c) was shut down nearly 3 years early because these synthetic chemicals, either alone or together, increased women’s risks for heart attacks, breast and uterine cancers, senile dementia and other deadly diseases. Nearly as bad, the supposed protection against these and other catastrophic conditions was just not there.

Wyeth’s market share of the “Premarin Family” of drugs plummeted by more than 60%.

After letting the dust settle a bit, Wyeth decided to fight: On October 5, 2005 they entered a Citizens Petition to compel the FDA to put compounding pharmacists into the dust bin of history (despite the fact that the Supreme Court has ruled that the FDA has no jurisdiction over this profession) AND ban the molecules that compete with their deadly drugs: estrogen and progesterone. The original 6 month comment period was set to expire on April 4, 2006. When health freedom activists asked people to register their opinion with the FDA, the outpouring was so great that the FDA server, we understand, was overwhelmed. For that reason or for some other reason, the comment period was extended by 30 days until May 4, 2005.

More than 50,000 comments have been registered with the FDA. If you have already written a comment in support of your right to make your own health decisions and do what you and your doctor believe is best for you, thank you.

If, on the other hand, you have not yet done so, now, now, NOW is the time. Simply click here (http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/healthfreedomusa/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=3356) to let the FDA know that your health freedom is important to you!

Wyeth’s amended Citizens Petition attempts to put a very different spin on what it trying to do. But, regardless of the PR dance, killing the competition and calling it “consumer protection” strikes me as corrupt as disease mongering by making up diseases and selling dangerous compounds that consume precious resources and expose people to iatrogenic (doctor caused) side effects up to and including preventable death.

Here is what Andy Komuves, R.Ph.of the International Association of Compounding Pharmacists has to say about Wyeth’s Citizens Petition and amendment:

Wyeth Backtracks; But Second Verse Same as the First
On Tuesday, Wyeth issued a press release announcing that it recently filed supplemental comments on its petition. The new Wyeth comments attempt to reframe the BHRT issue and to create the impression that those opposing the petition are merely confused about Wyeth’s intentions.

Wyeth is feeling the heat. We’ll stop nothing short of complete victory, but we’re encouraged today that we’ve got Wyeth’s PR team on its heels. They’re trying to revise history and say that their petition isn’t what we say it is: an attempt to rob women of access to bioidentical hormones.

According to news service Reuters, Wyeth filed supplemental comments with FDA this month and issued a press release to respond to some of the “misunderstandings,” as Wyeth calls them, about its citizen petition. You can read the Reuters article here.

Six months after it filed its initial comments, Wyeth finds itself up against about 50,000 people mostly patients and physicians who are upset with what the company is doing. So it’s no surprise that Wyeth feels compelled to re-frame its position.

They’ve just put lipstick on a pig. It’s a kindler, gentler attack on pharmacy compounding. Wyeth’s PR team drafted some platitudes about the value of compounding to adorn its supplemental filing, but the underlying legal theory is no less restrictive and harmful to patients than the original petition.

And its motives definitely haven’t changed. Wyeth is still seeking a political solution to a business problem to remove from the market an alternative to its flagging products.

If you haven’t written to FDA to oppose Wyeth’s comments or if your patients or their physicians haven’t either it’s not too late. Make sure there’s no misunderstanding at FDA: Wyeth’s petition will harm patients and must be rejected. … Tell the FDA to protect patient health, not Wyeth’s wealth.

Health freedom is not good for big pharma but it is good for you. Please send this blog to everyone you know and urge them to send a comment to the FDA urging them to protect their right to make natural health choices for themselves.

Thanks for your activism,

Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org