Pharmaceutical Drugs: A Beneficial – Risk to Vigor of Humans

HUMMS Student in Our Lady of Carmel School S.Y. 2020-2021

By: Alliah Zeth L. Causapin

Introduction:

As time passes by, our medicines have been evolving and so our human body also does.
The medicines, the cure that we consume and feed our human body became unpredictable.
Questions have started to mold in our minds especially on health conscious, vigor people. We
never really know the answers to all our questions unless we try to find it out on ourselves.
Medicines are like a triangle with three faces, first face was their benefits to human, second was
their hazardous side effects and third was the economic impact of each of these medicines. We
could never guarantee it’s 100% safety which lead some people questioning their medications as
well. Many people have already started to think twice especially when taking hard and harmful
medicines, although it is necessary to follow doctor’s orders and prescriptions. The choice is still
ours whether to follow it and take the risk or find organic alternative ones that we can ensure the
safety of our other and major internal organs. We should be aware that all medicines contain
chemicals which has both pros and cons on our human body. The benefit of medicines healing
the target pain and disease can be good signs that we should trust them but what about the other
organs especially kidneys, where these medicines leave their impact. Was these really curing us?
Or destroying us? A big question mark to vigor people.

Background of the Study:

Aspirin. The first medicine known and used as a pain reliever. One of the oldest
medicinal remedies in human history. It was extracted from the bark of the willow tree more than
3500 years ago. Ancient Sumerians and Egyptians have used this as a traditional medicine for
pain relief. The Bayer Company a German chemical and pharmaceutical Corp was one of the
first company to make and sell pharmaceutical drugs. Founded by Friedrich Bayer (1825-80) in
1863, he was a chemical salesman with his friend Johann Friedrich Weskott (1821-76) who
owned a dye company. This company’s headquarters which was originally in Barmen (now
Wuppertal) have been in Leverkusen, north of Cologne since 1912. This company was called the
Friedr. Bayer et comp. Incorporated as Farbenfabriken vormals Friedr. Bayer & Co.
Aspirin was the chance invention of Bayer chemist Felix Hoffman (1868-1946) was
introduced by the company in 1899. A trademark that has been a big demand during the world
war 1 for soldiers to relieve their wounds and pain. The aspirin which was in form of powder
when sold. A drug that was made from willow bark to salicylic acid.
Friedrich Serturner (1783-1841) witnessed a frustration at the unsuccessful trials and
errors on pharmacies which are trying to create a pain reliever medicine using Opium. These
attempts gave young Serturner an apparent answer which lead him to experimentation though he
lacks of research and formal medical knowledge. After months of isolating his examined
ingredient (a dried latex from Opium) the principium somniferum. This discovery contradicted a
current knowledge because it was the first ever alkaloid which is derived from a plant source.
He’s been conducting many animal experiments with this new compound, finding out both
sedative properties and dangerous consequences. Serturner initially named it Morpheus after the
Greek god of dreams. However due to the standardized naming of alkaloids he finally settled it
for the name Morphine. Which is the first modern pharmaceutical medicine.
For example, the rheumatism. It is a disease that encompasses both inflammatory and
non-inflammatory forms of pain and arthritis syndrome. There are varieties that affects the joints
and there are those that affects the whole body and other soft tissues as well. But there are two
ways of managing this common disease which is using traditional pain relievers that could also
reduce inflammation, this includes opioid analgesics like morphine which is used for extreme
pain and is known for being an addictive substance though by prescription. It has side effects of
having dilated pupils, slurred speech, shallow breathing, legal issues, irritability, mood swings
and many more. It also induces rush of euphoria followed by alternating states of drowsiness and
weakness. It also requires users to take larger doses to feel the same effects. But then people
have been telling that once they’ve attempted to cut its use, they are experiencing these
symptoms of withdrawal that makes it hard for them to stop using morphine. But taking these
would only help in easing the pain, though there’s still no single medication treatments that
improves the conditions of arthritis.
Many people have been searching for answers and medicines that could treat their diseases
without affecting other internal organs of their body. Especially common diseases, another
example was having high blood pressure or hypertension. Is when a force of the blood flowing in
the blood vessels is consistently too high. Treating this kind of disease can basically defend on
your lifestyle but for some people having uncontrollable symptoms is when medications are
needed to be implied for this disease is possible to worsen and create a lot of serious health
problems that can lead to heart attack, heart failure and kidney disease. An example of a
medicine that could help treating hypertensions are called antihypertensives. Diuretics, also
known as water pills, an example of drugs to treat high blood pressure which helps the kidneys to
get rid of excess water, sodium or salt and reduces the volume of blood that pass through your
vessels which lowers blood pressure but it could dehydrate you which is also bad for the kidney.

Statement of the Problem:

Some people have been taking medicines due to different kinds of diseases but all they
know was it is working and treating their target points and area. All they basically know was it is
prescribed by their doctors and everything is safe to be consumed. But we also need to know the
side effects of these medicines that will bring once it activates inside our body. “Will taking
these medicines be safe?”, “What could be the side effects of these?”, “Was this really the cure
to my diseases?”. A roaming wave of questions started to circle vigorous people in concern to
their health. Therefore, getting to explore on your own will give you more facts about
pharmaceutical drugs, but the only problem was having limited resources of knowledge and data
from news, magazine and papers which still appears to be uncertain. As researchers continue to
examine loads of medicinal tools in order to answer every question possible to ensure a human’s
health, a lot of side effects issues still remains to be a mystery.

Theoretical Framework:

Knowing the risk and benefits of a pharmaceutical products is important and is necessary
for people to know for they are just being conscious about their health. According to the Systems
of Pharmaceutical Drug Discovery by Anil Jayanti Aswani. Rational drug discovery began to
increase in the late 19th – 20th century. Including the Food and Drug Administration by Teddy
Roosevelt who have definitely increased their search for scientifically proven and safe evidences
before each drug could be legally sold. As by thinking about the consumers of these drugs, it has
been necessary for every company to show and prove the efficacy and safety of drugs to future
consumers that took up a lot of their time, efforts and money. Drugs are working on the specific
diseases by targeting the molecules within the cell which is affected by the drug to create
improvement. However, there are also changes that happened on drug’s designs which includes
the contents it has that makes the medicine work, which is believed to consume more time. With
the help of advanced computer system, everything had been a lot easier to examine processes
that are used to predict the chemical properties, abilities and hazards of new compounds.
The Chemometric analysis and methods have helped a lot on improving a drug’s chance
to surpass the regulatory process easier than usual. As the pharmaceutical industry has been
facing increasing difficulties on finding, experimenting and presenting new drugs especially now
that we’re in a midst of an unpredictable pandemic. Disapproval of drugs has also increased due
to the reasons of safety that are needed to be passed on. Even if the proposed drugs was proven
to treat humans, the possibilities of side effects has lead this phases to become extremely strict.
Just as it has been for Gefitinib drug case which strongly subdues its target protein which is the
HER2. A protein that is implicated in many human cancers. There’s also been a success to both
treatments of HIV and cancer by using the so called “Drug Cocktails” which means drinking
different kinds of drugs with different target diseases but needs support to this type of medication
through multi-target therapy as a promise for future use. But unfortunately, the pharmaceutical
industries are becoming weary of this project because of the increasing methods of drug tests
which also give them a bit of hopelessness.
On the other hand, according to the Social and Behavioral Theories and Physician’s
Prescription behavior by Rizwan Raheem Ahmed. Pharmaceutical marketing has the same
objectives as other industries to enhance the profitability and market share of the organizations
by fulfilling the needs and demands of a costumer taking into account the preferable
consideration of products. Doctors are also the prime costumers of newly launched medicines.
Pharmaceutical industries are highly regulated, they can’t advertise their products through
printed or media channels. They are not the type of company which sells their products directly
to people(patients). It depends on the doctors whether they will approve or allow the drug to be
used by consumers at a specific disease. The relationship between pharmaceutical companies and
doctors has gained that created a conflict between a doctor’s self-interest and ethical professional
interest.
 However, there’s a few studies which demonstrated that the marketing activities of the
pharmaceutical industry do not influence the majority of doctors, instead, doctors have been
prescribing it according to the merit of drug. Furthermore, a record of substantial amount of
literatures about it has confirmed that the influential effect of pharmaceutical marketing ideas
which has positive and significant on physician’s prescription behavior. Besides the increasing
trend of pharmaceutical marketing expenditure, another important concern was the inappropriate,
harmful and expensive prescriptions of drugs.
According to Hogerzeil and Carthy et al. this matter is two exhibitions, the unnecessary
prescriptions of medicines to the patient could lead into misuse, loss of health and loss of quality
of life to the patient. That is why there’s a strong need to evaluate the factors that changes the
physician’s prescriptions.
Both of these theories could testify at this topic which helps them to evaluate other
specific pharmaceutical problems that are not just connected to human body but to technology
and economy as well. These theories could also help us on testifying some of our questions
based on pharmaceutical drugs and their faces.

Conceptual Framework:

For many people that have been taking medications as a part of their daily routine or for
people who already have maintenance. Although these medicines will help on treating and easing
the pain of your disease, we should also be aware of the side effects that’s going to occur inside
our body while consuming this daily.

INPUT PROCESS OUTPUT

1. Inability to know
more from taking 1. The consumers of
pharmaceutical pharmaceutical drugs
drugs. would have hesitations
2. Having limited due to unclear thoughts
The operations that will be
knowledge and real about the medicine.
used to assemble all the
resources about 2. Most of the people
data are questionnaire and
medicines. would question the
interview methods.
3. Dearth of efficacy of a medicine
communication without a proper
between visualization or proof of
doctors/pharmacists safety.
and patients.

Figure 1.
Scope and Delimitations of the Study:
Health influencers and herbal medicines practitioners believes that there’s always an
answer, alternative or other way around in consuming synthetic pharmaceutical drugs that are
also dangerous to human. Researchers believes that health is the most important thing to be
maintained when it comes to our lifestyle. For their insights, our body is represented like a car
and not taking care of it was like letting the car to get depends on our choices if we would just let
it be or if we would fix it and be able to solve these complications.
This research was only made to specify the risks and benefits of taking pharmaceutical
drugs and the effects it brought to human. This research doesn’t mean to push people away from
using synthetic drugs but just to lessen its impact and the harm it could bring to our body
especially to vigorous and health conscious people to lessen their worries and to have more
knowledge about the one of the most in-demand products, medicines. Parents and adults, to
guide their children and family in terms of taking medicines and to teach them how to eat
naturally and create good lifestyle plan for their health as well.

Definition of Terms:

Aspirin- one of the earliest type of medicine which is traditionally used as pain killers.
(Dictionary; Oxford Languages.)
Morphine- a bitter crystalline addictive narcotic base that is the principal of alkaloid of opium
and is used in the form of soluble salt. (Dictionary; Merriam Webster, 1817)
Vigor- full of physical and mental strength. (Merriam Webster, google.com)
Adverse- acting against or in contrary direction. (Dictionary; Merriam Webster)
Hypertension- the systematic condition of accompanying high-blood pressure. (Dictionary;
Merriam Webster, 1893)
Alkaloid- a numerous, colorless, and bitter organic bases containing nitrogen and usually oxygen
that especially occur in psychologically active seed plants. (Dictionary; Merriam Webster, 1820)
Latex- a milky white fluid that is produced by cells of various seed plants and is the source of
rubber, gutta-percha, chicle and balata. (Dictionary; Merriam Webster, 1832)