Big or Bad Pharma?

“Doctor, doctor, fix me, please!” 

You trust your GP because they’re the expert, the professional, the oracle of health. 

“Take these magic pills and you will feel better,” falls from the well educated mouth. 

You pop the pills, as instructed, but they don’t fix you, you don’t feel better, they might even have made you feel worse. 

“These things take time, let’s give it another two weeks!” They assure, confident and peacocking in their educated judgement.  Meanwhile, you’re left trapped in a vortex of misery, declining health and frustration that the “magic” hasn’t worked for you. 

This scenario couldn’t be more familiar for thousands of people with varying ailments, but especially women who are entering the perimenopausal stage of their charmed existence as a female. 

The truth of the matter is that a doctor's medical education is limited in the nuances of women’s hormonal health.  Why? Well, most medical research has been conducted on men, creating huge gaps in a doctor’s knowledge when it comes to the ladies. The historic notion that women are just emotional lunatics or hysterics has been perpetuated by literature and the patriarchy for centuries. The argument that women are just predisposed to being mentally unwell because of their ’lazy and irritable’ nature dates back to the 18th century. The cure? An orgasm (insert eye roll).

Now we all know that the pharmaceutical industry’s main focus is to rake in the cash.  Why else would our newsfeed be littered with desperate parents, cancer patients or sick people from low income backgrounds begging strangers to fund their treatment because it isn’t available on the NHS? But, the realisation that we live in a world where Big Pharma engages in unethical practices that harm patients and undermine public health to line their pockets is abhorrent and, quite frankly, terrifying. 

Whilst doctors have a professional responsibility to refer to their training - Goldacre suggests that they need to be brave and question the information provided to them by pharmaceutical companies and to demand more transparency. Ultimately, we want our doctors to advocate for us, their patients, and not Big, Bad Pharma. Surely, their duty of care is to us, and they should be championing evidence based medicine that has nothing to hide and which is made available to everyone!