Something Smells Fishy about Big Pharma

Aiming to get in on the piece of the pie, pharmaceutical companies have started to produce and research into fish oil products, similar to the ones currently on the market. This tactic can be seen as clever or deceitful, because the version of the fish oil that pharmaceutical companies wish to prescribe is similar to the current version of the regular dietary supplement, with a few tweaks to make it 'better' for their customers. As of now they could be right, but there have been too few studies to validate their claims of making a prescription that would be better, at lowering triglyceride and LDL levels, than simply taking the current alternative that is already in stores.

Currently there are a few versions of prescription fish oils that are on the market, but some of the current forms are limited to patients with very high triglyceride levels, due to the fact that research has found that ancillary ingredients have helped raise some people's LDL levels by a few percentage points. Because of this safety issue, companies are trying to make their product safer, and by extension, prescribable, to patients with not as high triglyceride levels, expanding their market net by potentially tenfold.



Doctors are skeptical about pharmaceutical companies trying to create a product that is costly and ineffective for their patients, and they are right to be skeptical, as there have been very few clinical trials based upon these new prescription fish oils. Pharmaceutical companies know this too and are actively running many new trials to try and find clear cut and commercially pleasing benefits to advertise their products.

In my opinion, pharmaceutical companies are trying to come up with a new source of revenue, which is not bad, but at the expense of the customer who could receive the same benefits from a product that is approximately a sixth of the price of the product that pharmaceutical companies offer. Unless these companies can come up with a combination of fish oil and other ingredients that would offer a noticeable benefit, compared to regular fish oil, to their customers, I believe it is almost a crime to try and make a quick dollar off of an ineffective and expensive formula. If in fifty years I am prescribed fish oil supplements because of hypertension, then they better be miracle pills or my doctor will be losing a customer (that is in fact if the U.S. is still operating with the same healthcare system).

http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v18/n1/full/nm0112-6.html