Marty Makary seems to be having an effort in the FDA to make some classes of prescription meds OTC, what would be examples that would be beneficial and why? He mentioned anti-nausea, anti-BPH drugs, and naloxone.
Balancing safety, Makary said the drugs that will be approved for over-the-counter status will need to meet certain criteria.
“The FDA is going to create criteria and already has some basic criteria, but we’re gonna formalize that so that companies can understand what we are thinking when we talk about drugs that should be non-prescription, and they are common-sense things,” he said. “Drugs that are safe, no abuse potential, cannot be used in some nefarious way, and don’t require ongoing laboratory testing.”
To me it’s insane, that for example statins are not OTC. As it is, it’s hard to get people to take them, I can’t imagine folks will be rushing to take them for no reason.
Unfortunately, to me it’s a case of “show me”. There’s been talk for decades about getting e.g. statins to OTC status, but it’s all talk. Would be great to see it, but I’m not holding my breath. YMMV.
Some may think this harsh. I don’t believe in protecting people from themselves. They could treat some over-the-counter drugs like cigarettes and alcohol and require that the person be at least 18 years old. I lived in Europe for 7+ years, and I am thankful to be living in the USA. I cannot abide and I abhor “nanny states,” especially London.
“London, United Kingdom: Outside of Asia, London has one of the highest total counts, estimated at roughly 630,000 to 690,000 cameras watching its population.” In the woke United Kingdom, the Orwellian vision has come true: “newspeak” and “doublethink” reign supreme in the British government.
Yeah, OK, Brits beat me up
Agreed on statins. I also feel the jaggedness of the “nanny state”, personally I know the side effects of statins, even the more esoteric ones, and the risks, and what to monitor. It’s my health, I’ve done my research. But the state doesn’t allow me to buy it OTC for a low price. I have to nag a doctor to get on with the latest research, or order it off-shore on the grey market. It’s salient that it feels dumb, and that something’s wrong with the system. There’s plenty of OTC drugs already that can be misused by uninformed people, so there’s an asymmetry with those compared to this. But I haven’t researched the differences.
Most importantly it’s going to open up conversations as well on the public square about what’s good, in a more wider way perhaps. A discussion about early prevention with perhaps SGLT2 inhibitors, controlling BP with meds, or statins for cumulative LDL exposure, inflammation, etc. Now it’s artifically locked in some sense for broader reach between a doctor and patient, and guidelines that even further limits the potential. There are potent therapies out there, applicable in a good way, but no one discusses them, they’re locked.
Some bozo are going to eat 90 mg of Jardiance everyday, and perhaps some will die, but such decision making ability surely generalizes and if not Jardiance it might’ve been something else, at least for some. It maybe comes down to principles, and on net it feels like more lives will be saved than lost or maimed for some of these drugs if used according to the frontier preventative longevity research, like what Attia is doing, but I haven’t ran any calculations.
I’m a Brit living in London and I’m not going to beat you up. In fact I think most Brits would agree with you.
That said, we sound less nannyish than some other places given it is legal for us to import prescription drugs for personal use.
You know, the OTC acetaminophen can very easily be abused to cause irreversible liver failure. You can already do a lot of damage with currently available OTC meds. So that’s not an excuse - Tylenol is one of the most used OTC drugs, but we don’t have an epidemic of liver deaths. And it goes in the other direction too - just because a med is prescription only doesn’t mean it can’t be abused, as sleeping pill suicides prove,
Whatever the original motivation behind keeping meds prescription only, the reality is that tons of drugs are kept prescription only for financial reasons.
Time to clean house and take 90%+ medications to the OTC side. Restrict only those which have a very high odds of abuse, great difficulty in understanding use, and a danger to others when used maliciously.
