Prescription Drug Dangers

The big drug companies have found a cheaper way of making drugs.  It involves toxic fluoride. Here is the report that suggests over 50% of prescription drugs now contain fluoride:

by Charles Choi
UPI Science News, in New York


WILMINGTON, Del., Sept. 5, 2002 (UPI) -- After years of research, scientists in Delaware have discovered a new way of making key building blocks for many modern medicines, a breakthrough over century-old techniques that inadvertently generate acids and other toxic waste.

"The only byproduct of our reaction is water," researcher Mas Subramanian, a materials scientist at DuPont Central Research and Development, told United Press International.

This simple, clean technique is not only environmentally friendly, but also promises to drive down costs, the researchers said.

"This is a real advance, and I think it has a very significant future," comment chemist William Dobier of the University of Florida in Gainesville.

The technique uses fluorine, the element best known for fighting cavities that also plays a pivotal role in modern medicine. Some 30 percent to 50 percent of all pharmaceuticals now contain fluorine, Dobier told UPI, because it helps boost their effectiveness.

Scientists developed ways to insert fluorine into organic chemicals a century ago, and with a few modifications these widely used methods remain in use in industry today. However, "These processes often involve many steps that generate large amounts of waste at each step," Subramanian explained, including hydrochloric acid. Cleaning up this waste can prove quite expensive.

Subramanian and his colleague Leo Manzer discovered a greener alternative that adds fluorine to the common organic compound benzene in only one step. "I didn't expect this to work so well," Subramanian said.

Scientists for years have looked for organic methods to add fluorine to chemicals. After three years of tinkering, Subramanian and Manzer found an inorganic chemical to carry out the job instead. The compound in question is called copper fluoride and is quite cheap, Subramanian said.

The technique removed hydrogen from benzene and replaces it with fluorine. The freed hydrogen then combines with easily available oxygen to become water. After tinkering with a variety of chemicals for three years, the researchers found copper fluoride carried out the task with extreme efficiency.

So far, the new technique has created organic compounds known as fluorinated aromatics, often used in making drugs and farm-used fungicides. Dobier, who is continuing work on Subramanian and Manzer's findings with the help of two donated patents from DuPont, said it is likely that similar techniques can make a wider range of fluorinated organic chemicals in the future.

"Of course we have to optimize this for an industrial route," Subramanian said. "This is only a laboratory demonstration. But we can probably try doing this in six months to one year."

The scientists describe their findings in the September 6 issue of the journal Science.

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If putting fluoride in water wasn't bad enough since it also finds its way into most processed foods, the drug companies also put this known toxin in many drugs ostensibly to save a few bucks. (Or is there a more sinister agenda here?) Go to: http://poisonfluoride.com/pfpc/html/index_drugs.html and read about fluoride containing drugs to see how many deaths or suicides (remember, fluoride is neurotoxin) they've caused. Here are a few low-lights:

FOLLOWING the recent withdrawal of the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipobay, there is now a new perspective to the issue, the drug being a fluoride-containing compound. The drug, also known by its generic name, cerivastatin, is one of the many such compounds pulled off the shelves in the last few years.

Cerivastatin was taken off because of at least 40 deaths worldwide, 31 in the US alone (Poison Control, Aug 19).

According to a recently released commentary by a Canadian group, Parents of Fluoride Poisoned Children , a series of fluoride-containing drugs or so-called fluorinated drugs have been withdrawn from the market in the last 10 years due to their toxic effects on human beings.

One notable example is the combination "Fen-Phen" (a generic combination of fenfluramine and phentermine, the former being a fluorinated drug type) which was said to have weight-reducing effects. Others are dexfenfluramine (Redux) and fenfluramine (Pondimin).

There are at least eight other examples of fluorinated drugs withdrawn so far, because serious side-effects on the heart, and for suspected adverse influence on thyroid hormone activity.

They include, last year, cisapride (Propulsid) because of its severe side-effects on the heart. In 1999, two drugs were withdrawn.

These were an anti-allergy drug, astemizole (Hismanal); and grepafloxacin (an antibiotic, Raxar) because they too were associated with similar adverse events.

In 1998, patients with congestive heart failure using the drug mibedrafil (Posicor) showed a trend to higher mortality, causing it to be withdrawn.

Alredase (Tolrestat, an anti-diabetic) was withdrawn in 1997 after the appearance of severe liver toxicity and deaths among several patients. In the same year too fenfluramine (part of Fen-Phen) and dexfenfluramine were withdrawn.

In 1993, flosequinan (Manoplax, a heart drug) was withdrawn when it was shown that the beneficial effects on the symptoms of heart failure did not last beyond the first three months of therapy. After that, patients had a higher rate of hospitalisation than patients taking a placebo.

Of the many fluorinated drugs that remain in the market some carry warnings of serious cardiac toxicity, for instance halofantrine, a schizonticidal drug. More specifically, other fluorinated drugs, though they have not been withdrawn, are known to cause muscle wasting or rhabdomyolysis, like cerivastatin.

For instance, the PFPC commentary noted that the fluorinated antibiotic fluoroquinolone, used to treat infections, is reported to cause tendonitis and rhabdomyolysis.

In fact product information for such antibiotics (enoxacin, fleroxacin, norfloxacin, sparfloxacin, and tosufloxacin) was amended in Japan in October 1994, to state that rhabdomyolysis may occur.

Reportedly, the tragic story involving fluorinated drugs (the fluorophenyls in particular, initially limited to industrial use involving dyes and pesticides) can be traced way back to the 1930s when they were used to treat hyperthyroidism.

The use followed a discovery by IG Farben (Bayer) and Knoll's scientists that all fluoride compounds can interfere with thyroid hormone activity.

In the liver especially, organic fluoride compounds undergo extensive transformation, mainly via oxidative demethylation, involving the thyroid hormone (T3) mediated P-450 enzyme system. And the resulting metabolites may have higher activity and/or greater toxicity than the original compound.

The activity of organic fluoride compounds on the P-450 enzyme system is critical as it relates to the elimination of many other drugs. Inhibition of these enzymes can cause other drugs to accumulate to dangerous levels in the body, leading to hazardous drug-drug interactions. In many cases fluorinated drugs are being implicated as documented in hundreds of well-established studies.

Moreover, adds PFPC, the metabolites produced by organic fluoride compounds in the liver can be tranferred to the foetus through various pathways, including circulatory via placental passage, gastrointestinal via foetal swallowing, and respiratory secondary to foetal lung absorption. This may lead to congenital abnormalities as in the case of fluconsazole (Diflucan).

In short, going by the above evidence, fluorinated drugs seem to pose a number of risks associated with the fluorine or fluoride contained in them. It raises even more concern when fluoride itself is present in many industries and products, including food and drinks, without any evaluation or monitoring.

Also see: Supplements rate much higher in effectiveness vs prescription drugs in a survey among 26,000 parents of Autistic children.