The Complete Patient

Big Pharma is great at creating "magical" solutions for our problems. It promises cures for the diseases that scare us so much,  and solutions for our everyday irritations. I won't get into the fact that Big Pharma hasn't come very far in curing such diseases as cancer and Alzheimers. Its latest solution for the irritations of life is a new class of sleeping pill.

On the sleeping pill front, public radio did an excellent program today on the business of sleep. One item that stands out: a Big Pharma company spent $200 million promoting a sleeping pill last year, on which it generated something in excess of $300 million of revenue. But it isn't the one year's revenue it is interested in--it's the long-term revenue that comes from creating addicts out of consumers who become dependent on the pills.

One excellent outcome of the program is letting people know that there are much less costly, and less risky, ways of dealing with sleep problems than the addiction route.