If for any reason, you or someone you know has a problem taking normal medications, their ability to compound custom medications is at risk thanks to the Safe Drug Compounding Act of 2007 introduced by Senators Kennedy (D/MA), Burr (R/NC), and Roberts (R/Ks).
This bill will:
• Broadly eliminate the availability of many critical, commonly compounded medications that many patients rely on, such as bioidentical hormones for women, hospice care treatments for the terminally ill and customized medicines for children.
• Determine when compounded medicines are needed - a decision that has always been and should always be made by doctors.
• Restrict the compounded medications your doctor can prescribe even if he or she determines you need them.
Who will be affected?
Menopausal women and andropausal men, the Autistic community, individuals living with HIV/AIDS, hospice patients, infants and young children with conditions like gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), and people who are extremely allergic or sensitive to fillers, dyes, and additives in medicines will be left with no choice.
If you know anyone who will be affected, or are simply against the federal government interfering in what should be a decision between YOU and YOUR DOCTOR, go to the Health Freedom Foundation to send a letter to your Senators. Or write your senators directly with your personal take on this bill.
To give you a narrow example of why this bill is so important to so many people, let me tell you why I'm against it.
For most of my life, I suffered from recurrent sinus infections and headaches as well as random rashes. No one thought much about it -- I had seasonal allergies and sensitive skin. "Here's some antihistamines, good luck to you" was the general response.
Then, during college, things became worse. My headaches turned to migraines that would last several days. Always thin, I started losing weight no matter what or how much I ate. My acne got worse and my joints ached. Then, when I went to graduate school, I began to have severe stomach cramps that I couldn't link to anything. Plus, I couldn't stay awake after I ate. No matter what, I'd practically pass out for an hour after eating.
The stomach cramps made me think about the fact that when I was an infant, I was intolerant to corn - found out because I was also lactose intolerant. So I figured I'd cut corn out of my diet. Corn starch and corn syrup were eliminated and I felt better. I had energy and my headaches and ear aches went away. For a while. Then it all came back just as bad as before.
That's when I discovered the Avoiding Corn website and learned that there's hidden corn in almost everything: Dextrose, MSG, and even xanthan gum are all hidden sources of corn to name a few. I resorted to cooking from scratch (Thanks, Grandma) and I felt better. And for the first timem in my life, I put on ten pounds.
Problem solved, right? Sadly, no. I'd found the food sources, but as I had occassional unexplained corn reactions, there was still something missing: medicines. My allergy medicine had corn in it. My nasal antihistamine had corn in it. Every prescription antibiotic I took had corn in it. And all of my over the counter medicines had corn in them.
I finally figured this out when I kept getting odd head pains that the doctors said weren't sinus infections. A spot on the back of my head would hurt as if someone was pushing a nail into it. I'd take tylenol and it would make my stomach cramp among other things -- look on the bottle, CORN. So I switched to just asprin after checking other OTC pain relievers, but it never helped the pain much. Finally, one day, buying another bottle of bayer asprin, I flipped it over to find they'd changed the ingredient list from "microcrystalline cellulose" (sometimes corn, sometimes not) to plain "corn starch". I stopped taking it and after about two weeks the pain started to decrease. That's when I changed to a stronger antihistamine (it still has corn, but the antihistamine is strong enough to counteract the corn) and the pain eventually went away.
Imagine now that the next time you get the flu, or even a bad cold, you know that every over the counter remedy there is will only make you sicker in a different way. For people allergic or sensitive to many fillers, dyes, or other aspects of medicines, this is a common occurence. The only way we can cope is to work with our doctors to compound common medicines. And no, we can't compound medicines under patent protection.
Help us make sure that government regulation doesn't force us to take medicine that will make us sick (or even kill us for those with anaphylatic responses) or do without.