Healthy Living
Dogs And Drugs?
By David Perlmutter, MD, FACN
The past decade has seen an explosive growth in the pharmaceutical industry not only in the drugs used to treat common diseases like hypertension and diabetes, but also highly specialized drugs designed for rarer clinical problems. Typically, when specialized drugs are developed for "niche markets," their prices are grossly inflated, thus ensuring profitability.
But now it looks as if the major pharmaceutical companies have expanded their "market potential" even further. On January 5, 1999, the Food and Drug Administration approved Clomicalm®, to treat separation anxiety in dogs. Pfizer’s Anipryl® was approved for "canine cognitive dysfunction syndrome."
How wonderful and simple our lives will soon be now that we can medicate Fido who tends to cry when we leave him at home for the afternoon, or dumb old Muffy who never could figure out how to fetch and thus clearly satisfies the diagnostic criteria for canine cognitive dysfunction syndrome.
Where will it all end? In the past three years the number of children using drugs such as Prozac®, Paxil®, or Serzone® has doubled in the United States. In many elementary schools as many as 20 to 25% of the students are on Ritalin® or other psychoactive drug for Attention Deficit Disorder. Years ago we were told our plants would thrive if we talked to them. Perhaps the pharmaceutical industry is developing a drug to alleviate that burden as well.