Anti-Lunesta: The first drug to disrupt restful sleep!

Have you noticed the loneliness at the office lunchroom, bathroom, copier and water cooler?

Everyone else talking about their sleep disorders and the miracle pills they are taking to "cure" themselves, while you, one of the last Americans not to be diagnosed by the T.V. ads as having severe, horrific, potentially lethal sleep distrubances, are left out of the (overly) medicated social circle.

It simply isn't right!

That is why we, Sleep Psychiatry Pharmaceuticals (a non-profit, philanthropy arm of the makers of LUNESTA), have done research into the Social Isolation Syndrome in those with Normal Sleep Patterns (SIS-NSP). Our initial studies (unpublished) reveal that the 3% of Americans who are not on prescription strength sleep aids are becoming the hidden epidemic of the 21st century. These citizens face increasing social isolation due to the fact that they are left out of the conversations that their co-workers, friends, family, plumbers, and bookies are having over their various sleep maladies (again, as diagnosed by the "educational" ads on t.v.)

SIS-NSP is no joke, and that is where we decided to step in and help - ANTI LUNESTA is a drug we have recently formulated (through cheap overseas labor by a high school chemistry class in New Delhi) to solve this problem. This drug takes someone with normal sleep, and using powerful components (arsenic, Cheese Whiz) completely distrupts the hormonal patterns that lead to this condition of "restful sleep."

And the result?

Just ask Juan, a non-documented immigrant who was enrolled in a trial of ANTI-LUNESTA on the condition that he would not be deported (perfectly legal in Texas and other border countries to the U.S.A.)

"Well man, after I took one of them pills, I could not sleep for nothing. I mean I thought the torture at the hands of the immigration officials was bad, but the inability to sleep was far worse. However, immediately, I became popular in the detention center's main gang, Las Insomnias, and could finally relate to what it was like to have sleep problems. I immediately had one of my hombres smuggle me some real LUNESTA across the border from Mexico, since it was about 1/8 of the American cost for the drug. This miraculaously restored my sleep, though I must take 3 other medicines to control the side effects from these medicines. Thanks ANTI-LUNESTA! If I ever get out of here, I want to begin a non-profit to help folks just like me join the crowd of the worried well, the over-medicated masses"
{translated word for word by one of our company's "translators")

Don't suffer from SIS-NSP any longer. Go grab you a bottle of ANTI-LUNESTA and join the crowd today! And remember, once you do, go grab some of the LUNESTA that everyone else
is taking and find your way into social circles you only imagined of being a part until now!

WARNINGS: Combining ANTI-LUNESTA with any other sleep aid other than LUNESTA has been shown to cause death in 1 - 64% of patients (unpublished data from Guantanamo). Also, buying medications from across the border to restore restful sleep may result in side effects of reduced out-of-pocket expenses and decreased rates of personal bankruptcy, so we would strongly advise buying it at prohibitively high costs right here in the good ole' U-S-of-A.

World AIDS Day: An opprtunity for physicians to shout "YES" for access to medicines, "NO" for access to our integrity

On World AIDS Day this year, we commemorate another embarrassing 365 days in which millions of persons with HIV/AIDS around the globe continue to lack access to the effective, life-saving medicines to treat their fatal disease. Not because the world can't afford it, and definitely not because the pharmaceutical companies are going bankrupt.

In fact, these companies continue to spend $15,000 to advertise to each practicing physicianin the U.S. in order to alter their prescribing behavior, toward more expensive, "me-too" medicines; this same amount of money could provide 50-150 AIDS patients a year's worth of drugs that could keep them alive. And despite the pharmaceutical industry's propaganda that they cannot afford to sell such medicines at affordable prices in thedeveloping world, consider this: over the past three decades, no U.S. industry has come close to achieving the profit margins of the makers of prescription drugs. Furthermore, only 11% of total sales for this industry come from the developing world, arguing against the sound bytes by PhRMA, the industry's lobbying group, that they would go broke in order to provide such treatments.

Recently, in a highly publicized case, Abbott Pharmaceuticalsdid the unthinkable and decided to take its drugs off the market in Thailand when the country made the decision to not honor the company's patent on an HIV/AIDS drug due to the medicine'sprhibitively high cost. But how does this connect to the free lunches and gifts given to doctors?

Daniel Carlat's recent NYT expose (Dr. Drug Rep, Nov. 25th 2007), an article in which he elaborates on the ways in which drug companies buy doctors who then pitch the company's products to their colleague physicians brings up many ethical and cost issues, but is there a connectionbetween this practice and the larger inequities we see in the access to essential, life-sustaining medicines globally?Yes, and it is quite simple - when doctors eat (literally) out of the hands of these pharmaceutical companies here at home, they are numbed into complacent non-action regarding the policies of these same companies abroad. Physicans and physicians-in-training must muster the moral and ethical willpower to shout, "YES" to access to medicines, "NO" to access to my integrity.

Physicians must tell these companies, who claim to be so fond of gift-giving, that we want to see HIV/AIDS patients served with life-saving medicines at affordable costs instead of having lavish lunches served in our clinics and hospitals. Until we can do this, wiping our chins and conscience from the bribes of the drug companies, we will not see physicians stand up to demand access to medicines for the world's most vulnerable.