skullaria wrote:
Drug Companies are moving to make compounded medications illegal though. They are sponsoring congressman to pass legislation that would mean that the only medications available to the public, are in the forms they provide, and that form ONLY.

Historically speaking, isn't this the reason in the first place why a pharmacist has to go to school for a few years?

Yes - there is a lot of education to become a pharmacist. Usually they have a degree in chemistry, then they go to one of the pharmaceutical schools. It is a LOT of chemistry.

skullaria wrote:
Yes - there is a lot of education to become a pharmacist. Usually they have a degree in chemistry, then they go to one of the pharmaceutical schools. It is a LOT of chemistry.

Ok, so if we cut the pharmacist out of the equation, the pharmacies will drop that extra person from payroll. The would, in effect, render pharmacies as time-constrained distributors of medicine, filled by minimum-wage grunts in white coats. Lower overhead for CVS, Wal*Mart and the like, but what gain to the consumer? This looks to me like a push by the drug companies for more direct product placement. But how to maintain the control environment while simultaneously lowering over head? I sense a liability issue...

skullaria wrote:
Today, if you are allegic to food dyes, corn starch, or some other filler ingredient used in pills, your pharmacist can obtain the chemicals from the drug company, and provide you the chemicals you need without you having to ingest what you are perhaps violently allergic to.

Patients with painful nerve conditions - like me - have special formulas of lidocaine, capsicum, and a few other chemicals - mixed by the pharmacist into a numbing salve. The percentages can be tweaked by pain management physicians into a salve that keep people from having to take narcotics. My dad recently had to have a compounded medication to treat a spot of skin cancer.

Drug Companies are moving to make compounded medications illegal though. They are sponsoring congressman to pass legislation that would mean that the only medications available to the public, are in the forms they provide, and that form ONLY.

Combine this with their move to patent old drugs recently out of patent, with simple new methods of delivery, or just with an additional bit of tylenol, and you start to see how really greedy they are.

For instance - Ultracet ® is often 60.00 to fill, but all it is in effect is tramadol (3.00 for a full bottle of generic) with tylenol (1.00 in generic.)

One of the motivations for doing this is geno-typed compounds, which would theoretically eliminate the need for compound medications. Geno-typing alters the pharmaceutical compound of a medication in minute ways (often simply changing the fillers or base compounds) and can maximum effectiveness of the medication and sometimes reduce or eliminate side-effects. Obviously there's billions in R&D behind the process of doing this and even more billions in profit waiting for it to be brought to market.