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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 14418

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

 

Publication type: Journal Article

Cutrona SL, Woolhandler S, Lasser KE, Bor DH, Himmelstein DU, Shrank WH, LeLeiko NS.
Free drug samples in the United States: characteristics of pediatric recipients and safety concerns.
Pediatrics 2008 Oct; 122:(4):736-42
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/122/4/736


Abstract:

OBJECTIVES: Free drug samples frequently are given to children. We sought to describe characteristics of free sample recipients, to determine whether samples are given primarily to poor and uninsured children, and to examine potential safety issues. METHODS: We analyzed data on 10295 US residents <18 years of age from the 2004 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, a nationally representative survey that includes questions on receipt of free drug samples. We performed bivariate and multivariate analyses to evaluate characteristics associated with receipt of >or=1 free drug sample in 2004. We identified the most frequently reported sample medications and reviewed potential safety issues.

RESULTS: Ten percent of children who received prescription medications and 4.9% of all children received >or=1 free drug sample in 2004. In bivariate analyses, poor children (family incomes of <200% of the federal poverty level) were no more likely to receive free samples than were those with incomes of >or=400% of the poverty level (3.8% vs 5.9%). Children who were uninsured for part or all of the year were no more likely to receive free samples than were those who were insured all year (4.5% vs 5.1%); 84.3% of all sample recipients were insured. In multivariate analyses, routine access to health care (>or=3 provider visits in 2004) was associated with free sample receipt. The 15 most frequently distributed pediatric free samples in 2004 included 2 schedule II controlled medications, Strattera (atomoxetine) and Adderall (amphetamine/dextroamphetamine), and 4 medications that received new or revised black box warnings between 2004 and 2007, Elidel (pimecrolimus), Advair (fluticasone/salmeterol), Strattera (atomoxetine), and Adderall (amphetamine/dextroamphetamine).

CONCLUSIONS: Poor and uninsured children are not the main recipients of free drug samples. Free samples do not target the neediest children selectively, and they have significant safety considerations.

 

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Far too large a section of the treatment of disease is to-day controlled by the big manufacturing pharmacists, who have enslaved us in a plausible pseudo-science...
The blind faith which some men have in medicines illustrates too often the greatest of all human capacities - the capacity for self deception...
Some one will say, Is this all your science has to tell us? Is this the outcome of decades of good clinical work, of patient study of the disease, of anxious trial in such good faith of so many drugs? Give us back the childlike trust of the fathers in antimony and in the lancet rather than this cold nihilism. Not at all! Let us accept the truth, however unpleasant it may be, and with the death rate staring us in the face, let us not be deceived with vain fancies...
we need a stern, iconoclastic spirit which leads, not to nihilism, but to an active skepticism - not the passive skepticism, born of despair, but the active skepticism born of a knowledge that recognizes its limitations and knows full well that only in this attitude of mind can true progress be made.
- William Osler 1909