So sorry to hear you were caught up in that scam. You are not alone. Far too many have been harmed by drugs rushed to market without adequate testing. In fact, the public actually is the FDA phase 4 testing cohort. That means, get the drug out there and collect the data on side effects and how the drug works without informed consent. The assumption is always, safe and effective. A patient that takes the drug is considered to have given implied consent just by taking the drug. That is not informed consent. The providers frankly should carry more responsibility for their patients in regards to informed consent.

I remember a similar situation with the cox-2 inhibitors taken for arthritic types of pain. Several of them were given a black box warning and had to be taken off the market. Celebrex however, is still being marketed. It too should have been removed. When I started to notice an increase in cardiac issues with this drug class my radar went off. Even just a cursory understanding of this drug class' pharmacology should have been enough to give pause - something a first year medical student should have been able to figure out.

Simply put, inflammation is the enemy. With the increases in bad seed oils in American diets, inflammatory based chronic disease is rampant. There is a physiological pathway of inflammation in the body that is driven by the increase in omega-6 fatty acids from those seed oils. Think of it like water in a funnel where all the inflammation flows down into the system. Cox-2 inhibitors, like the osteoporosis drugs, reduces part of the inflammation flow that comes out of that funnel - the cox-2 pathway. Sounds good right, eliminate that pathway and reduce inflammation. But, without restricting the inflammation, the water coming into that pipeline, all that inflammation that flowed into cox-2 just ends up being redirected into another pathway called LOX. That pathway has its effects in the heart. Therefore, people taking cox-2 inhibitors have increased risk for very damaging heart attacks - and that is exactly what happened. I was sounding the alarm on cox-2 inhibitors years before they were taken off the market and was unwilling to endorse their use. I personally know people that were taking those drugs for fibromyalgia and ended up having massive heart attacks - some so massive it lead to disability.

I used to tell my patients that my personal rule is, if a drug or surgical procedure does not have at least a ten year track record of data to look at, don't touch it. That is of course, if you do mind being made into a Guinea pig. The clot shots are just another example of not ready for prime time, and yet people still lined up to be test subjects. Without knowing all the science, the fact that this was new technology without a history should have been reason enough to put the brakes on. Hopefully with a new change of the guard things can start to change at the FDA and prevent some of this from happening. Only time will tell.