Something Stinks Around Here!

Maybe it’s that bottle of Lipitor in your medicine chest. It seems that Pfizer has just recalled 191,000 bottles of Lipitor due to reports of a musty odor in Lipitor bottles.

You might ask “Why should this affect anyone?” – according to Pfizer, this odor does not affect the product or it’s safety. You would think that this would only bother the pharmacist who repackages the pills – right? This might have been the case in past years, but not in today’s marketplace.

This news story actua;;y brings to light a nasty little trend in the pharmaceutical industry – prepackaged medications. Pharmacists no longer prepare or even repackage most prescription drugs anymore – they simply dispense retail bottles that were pre-packaged by the manufacturer.

This is a good thing – right? It sounds like an economical way to save labor. Actually, in my opinion, this is a bad thing – a very bad thing.


Pharmacists are slowly being eliminated from the important role that they once served in the world of medicine. Your local pharmacists used to be a highly trained professionals who knew their customer as well as the medications they used, and acted as a good source of advice as well as a needed double-check system on the dispensing of medications. Very often, it was the pharmacist who caught a mistake by a prescriber who wrote a prescription that might have had an ill effect on the patient. This extra layer of security has become even more important today because of all the specialists and sub-specialists who may be unaware of what other meds a patient is on when they write them a prescription. A knowledgeable professional, who knows about drug interactions and personal sensitivities is needed at the dispensing point. Don't believe me? According to the Center for Disease Control, the death rate for 'unintentional poisoning' - usually attributed to people taking the wrong prescription drug or taking a prescription in the wrong dosage - has almost doubled according to the most recent statistics.

Drug companies don’t really like pharmacists, as they often recommend less expensive, yet viable, alternatives to expensive name-brand drugs.

When is the last time that you saw a drug rep in a pharmacy? If you’re like me, the answer is probably ‘never’ – and this is really quite strange when you think about it. After all, the pharmacies are the ones who actually purchase the drugs in large quantities from a pharmaceutical company - they are the wholesalers in the pharmaceutical industry. But they never get any of the perks that most high-volume customers would normally receive in most any other industry. In the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical market, the perks are reserved for the physician who neither buys or resells prescription drugs. Pharmacists have to buy their own lunch.

Pharmacists have been hard hit by the recent changes in medicine. They used to be a respected business person and confidant – a valuable member of the community. Today, they are almost certain to be an employee of a large corporation.

Insurance companies also are squeezing out the pharmacists. They offer incentives to their subscribers so that they get their medications from a large mail-order company (that is usually owned by a pharmaceutical giant). They want to be the ones who tell the patient what drug to buy and not leave that advice to an independent 3rd party like your local pharmacist.

Sadly, your friendly local pharmacist is rapidly becoming an anachronism with little place in the current health care system. And this is very bad news for the patient, who is losing an important health care advocate in the process.


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