Diabetes Drugs. So you think these are helping you?

Diabetes is reaching epidemic proportions. One of the main reasons for this is that diabetes is a direct 'side-effect' of many conventional drugs and treatments. Yet, far from having done enough damage, the conventional medical establishment gives us more drugs to treat the disease.

So what are these drugs like? What 'side-effects', or more accurately, what diseases, do diabetes drugs cause?

The dangers of the diabetes Avandia were so serious the drug was eventually banned in the UK and Europe in 2010. I have written about Avandia in previous blogs, and if you want to know the dangers of this drug, click the links here:

Avandia. Still on sale! (July 2010).

Avandia is banned (September 2010).

Avandia. Still on sale! (April 2011).

Another diabetes drug, Actos, has more recently been banned in India, German and France - because it is known to cause bladder cancer, congestive heart failure and death. It is, to the best of my knowledge, still on sale in the rest of the world! Indeed, Actos has been one of the world's most widely prescribed drugs for Type 2 diabetes. But it increases the risk of bladder cancer, the manufacturer knew this, and were fined $9bn by the USA courts for withholding the information!

And it is not just Avandia and Actos. In this blog, "Diabetes Drugs. The cost to our health", in May 2013) I described the harm caused by drugs called Victoza, Byetta, Nesina and Januvia.

The Agora Health website said this about the diabetes drug, Victoza, which was found to cause a rare kind of thyroid cancer, and pancreatitis, and could therefore be deadly.

“Victoza proved to be so dangerous that, in 2012, the FDA received a petition asking that the agency remove it from the market immediately. Even though Victoza "puts patients at higher risk of thyroid cancer, pancreatitis (and) serious allergic reactions", the FDA denied this request... as expected! 

And in July 2013, I wrote this blog, "Diabetes. Are patients better off with, or without these conventional drugs".

So perhaps we might expect that our drug regulators might be expected to be more cautious when approving new Big Pharma drugs! Not a bit of it!

Recently, the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved yet another diabetes drug that is riddled with serious and harmful ‘side effects’ - that is the drug causes disease!

Another Avandia? Another Actos? Probably. And the drug, called Tanzeum, will probably kill as many people as its predecessors before any action will be taken to protect patients. Tanzeum, a drug that has to be injected into the bloodstream, is designed to mimic a hormone that causes the pancreas to release insulin.

Drug Regulators, like the FDA in the USA, and MHRC in the UK, are aware of the dangers, but they take no action. 

Agora Health warned (in April 2014) about another diabetes drug, Invokana, and described it as a drug to be avoided, and outlined the futile efforts to ban it

“In typical FDA fashion, it's allowing GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the maker of Tanzeum, to conduct a 15-year study for a rare kind of cancer called medullary thyroid carcinoma that could be linked to Tanzeum. You read that right - 15 years! 

So GSK will also report back to the FDA about the heart risks of Tanzeum, but not, of course, until the drug has been causing disease, and killing people, for a very long time!

So are there any diabetes drug not mentioned in this list? There probably are lots more. But would you want to take the chance that these are any safer? It is not the wise option. We all need to learn from experience. Conventional medical drugs do not just cause 'side-effects', they cause disease and death!

Diabetes Drugs. The cost to our health

Diabetes drugs cost us dearly!

One drug, now banned, is Avandia. Not long ago, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), were fined $3 billion when they pleaded guilty to a felony in the USA. Apparently, when they marketed the drug GSK admitted that they decided to hide data about Avandia increasing the risk of heart attacks, and congestive heart failure. They continued to do so between 2001 to 2007, during which time they made enormous profits - at the expense of our health.

So was this just a one-off situation? A rogue Big Pharma company who broke the rules? No, GSK's biggest rival, Takeda Pharmaceutical Co, which makes a diabetes drug called Actos, have now been accused of withholding safety data in order to make it appear safer than its rival, Avandia. It is know that the adverse reactions to Actos include diseases such as bladder cancer and congestive heart failure.

So, was this just a two-off situation? No. Other Big Pharma companies have since sought to fill the gap left by Avandia and Actos, and introduced more diabetes drugs. Four years ago, Victoza was introduced, the latest magic pill,the cure for diabetes. Unfortunately, it has since been discovered that this drug can cause disastrous harm to the pancreas, increasing the risk of an early, unnecessary death.

So was this just a three-off situation? No. According to Agora Health's 'Daily Health Alert', a new study in the journal Diabetes has now implicated more than a dozen drugs, in the same class as Victoza. Brand names include Byetta, Nesina, and Januvia, and that US researchers have found that these drugs, incretin mime tics, can drastically increase your risk of pancreatitis.

          "Here's where it gets insane. None of this is new to the medical authorities. In fact, the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) previously warned that post-marketing reports about these drugs include "fatal and serious nonfatal cases" of acute pancreatitis". 

There is also evidence that Januvia can increase a patient's risk of cancer.

In their newsletter, dated 3rd July 2012, and their magazine, dated November 2012, "What Doctor's Don't Tell You" stated that the 'new generation' of diabetes drugs were 'killers'. They said that research, at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, had found that anyone taking these drugs were 50% more likely to die than people taking the older diabetes drugs. The drugs Glucotrol, Daonil, and Diabeta were analysed in this research.

So this is yet another situation that demonstrates that the Drug Regulation system, designed as they are to protect patients, quite simply fail to do so. At the test stage evidence of drug dangers are either hidden, or not acted upon even when they are known. Once introduced, drugs are allowed to harm patients, and Big Pharma companies are allowed to profit from them, with only inadequate restrictions being placed on their prescription. In the meantime, our doctors are offered inducements, by the drug companies to sell the drugs; and in the main, they meekly go along with it.

Only when pharmaceutical drugs are found to be killers, and only when the evidence is overwhelming and incontrovertible, do drug regulators act to protect patients.

See 'Medical Science: the failure to protect' for more about this.

There has been an epidemic of diabetes in recent decades, at least partly caused by other pharmaceutical drugs, such as diuretics and Beta Blockers, and the result is that many diabetics are, or have been, taking these 'anti-diabetes' drugs. Clearly, these patients cannot be assured that they are safe taking them. There is a long history of too much obfuscation, too many lies, a record of fraud and dishonesty, a lack of concern about patient safety,within the entire conventional medical establishment (starting with Big Pharma companies, through regulation, right up to our doctors).

So what should patients do? The Daily Health Alert says that anyone taking any diabetes drugs should talk to their doctors "about an alternative treatment plan". They add that 

          "... you can usually restore normal pancreas function by making the right dietary changes. These might not be easy but they certainly won't increase your risk of cancer, heart attack or premature death".

If this is so, it has to asked - why is it that doctors don't prescribe a better diet, and not dangerous pharmaceutical drugs?