Do You Really Need that Prescription Drug?

health reporter who has always extolled the benefits and need of following

doctor's advice and orders now warned that we should start doing our

homework when it comes to taking prescription drugs. She revealed that

some senior citizens are being duped into taking way too many unnecessary and even harmful prescription drugs. Even though this report is way too long in coming, I am glad it finally came. However, I believe the warning should apply to everyone --not just senior citizens.

Though I have long known about prescription drugs and their often serious side affects from the Physicians for Responsible Medicine, I also was saddened to find out that some nursing and retirement homes do little to check on the unnecessary taking of prescription drugs by their elderly clients.

Years ago I read in an AARP magazine that a Florida pharmacist was employed to check the medications of senior citizens in retirement communities. He was shocked to find how many unnecessary and costly prescriptions were being prescribed and taken by many of the retirees.

I don't remember exactly how many prescriptions an elderly patient was

taking, but it was an obscene number of unneeded prescriptions. Surely this was not beneficial and even probably harmful for him. Ditto, an elderly woman who I believe was even taking a contraceptive among her daily "cocktail" of unnecessary prescriptions which also probably had serious side effects. Big Pharma was alive and well here among the

elderly who become their unwilling victims with obvious little oversight by the caretakers here.

The senior citizen being interviewed on the evening news here in Cleveland remarked that he had been taking an excess of a prescription drug whose benefits he now feels were dubious at best and harmful at worst. And buying these expensive drugs almost bankrupted him.

Where was this reporter all these years when exposes on 20/20 and other

news media warned us that doctors are often wined and dined by Big Pharma to prescribe their drugs regardless of benefit or need? Clearly, we should be wary of all "experts" and news reports and check them out ourselves.

LADIES- DO YOU REALLY NEED PREMARIN VAGINAL CREAM?

I do not know why I thought that Wyeth's Premarin products were passe' and was beyond sad to find that Premarin mares still suffer. I know that for way too many years women were following the advice of their doctors and were taking Premarin -- a horse urine supplement to address their hot flashes.

I have always maintained that if any woman was foolish enough to take a

horse urine supplement, I wouldn't have cared except for ONE very big reason. Thousands and thousands of pregnant mares were forced yearly to stand tethered in dark and dank stables with cups attached to their vulvas to catch their concentrated urine. They were given very little water to achieve this.

If this doesn't horrify anyone, then I can only say that horse suffering means nothing to you. I was also glad that a noted doctor -- Dr. Christine Northrup maintained that women did not need horse urine to address hot flashes. But here again doctors were prescribing it over and over again -- keeping those poor mares chained to deliver their urine for women who were flocking to buy it because their doctors prescribed it. Were these doctors being rewarded for prescribing it?

Anyone interested in what a premarin horse farm is like, there is abundance material on this very sad subject on the internet. If you have an ounce of compassion, you will be appalled at what you will read and will not understand as so many of us- how government (FDA) and we could allow this to happen.

When I found out that Wyeth Pharmaceuticals is still using mares for their

urine in a vaginal cream which I found on a full page ad in the Ladies Home Journal magazine, I was horrified.

SO LONG LADIES HOME JOURNAL

Looking at this full page ad advertising Premarin Vaginal Cream, I wondered how could a woman's magazine feature an ad which clearly means suffering to Premarin mares? I immediately e-mailed the editor and told her a little about premarin mares' suffering. I also told her that I could not continue to subscribe to a magazine which promotes mare suffering.

The editor not only lacked the kindness to respond to my concern, but this

month the same offensive ad appeared again. Two things I now knew. I will not renew my subscription, and I will also cancel my present subscription as well.

I also believe, that in my opinion, a magazine which is devoted to women issues should be concerned about suffering mares who are mothers like many who subscribe to this magazine.