A few days ago, I got a letter from my gastrointestinal doctor in the mail. It informed me that if he had prescribed Zelnorm to me, I should make an appointment at his office right away so he could figure out a new course of treatment with other drugs. Turns out that Zelnorm, which was prescribed only to women with irritable bowel disease (IBS) had been recalled because, as Zelnorm’s website explains:

A recent analysis of clinical trial data identified a small imbalance that was statistically significant in the number of cardiovascular ischemic events in patients taking Zelnorm. These events included heart attack, stroke and unstable angina. They occurred primarily in patients who had pre-existing cardiovascular disease and/or cardiovascular risk factors. There is no demonstrated causal relationship between Zelnorm and these events.

Fortunately for me, I had taken the prescription from my doctor and promptly thrown it away. Part of my suspicion regarding Zelnorm stemmed from my paranoia about any new drug. More and more, I am learning that clinical trials are mostly bullshit, and drugmakers are obsessed with getting drugs out on the market come hell or high water so that they can post a profit. A statistician friend who worked for drug companies for years told me that the finagling of data is terrifying. She quit the business even though she needed the money because she couldn’t stand being part of the dishonesty any longer.

The other reason I didn’t fill Dr. Kummer’s (yes, that is his real name) prescription for Zelnorm is how much I loathed their commercials. I actually hate all drug commercials because most people don’t need their products and the amount of money they waste by advertising on prime time TV is enormous. The truth is that advertising and marketing is a far bigger cost to drug companies than research & development at this point. If drug companies really wanted to lower their costs so that a normal person can afford their supposedly life saving drugs that might kill them on accident, they would stop advertising on TV. But I digress…

The Zelnorm ads featured women’s toned abs with squiggly lines on them to indicate digestive problems. Really. You are selling me a product to basically help me crap better, not makeup, not fashion, not anything sexy. So what is it with the need to stick toned abs in my face? It just reminded me that not only do I have a mysterious digestive ailment which causes horrendous gas and unreliable bowel movements that put me into embarrassing situations, but also that I am flabby. Fantastic. Could you try and make me feel less desirable as a person? No, there was no way I was going to buy into this drug.

Dr. Kummer was mostly unfazed when I told him why I never filled his prescription for Zelnorm. “Well, it doesn’t work for everyone anyway,” he said. He sure got that right.

For more info on Zelnorm and Medication Safety Week, see Denise’s excellent write up on BlogHer.

Suzanne also blogs about her mysterious digestive ailment from time to time at Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS) & Other Rants