The Truth About Xolair
One of the highly inaccurate things I saw reported on this week was at Alternet. One of their writers did a piece about the drug I was on for just shy of eight years - Xolair. The writer did a grave disservice to the many asthmatics out there by their allegations against the drug and the pharmacy company. They alleged that Big Pharma was intentionally ripping people off with Xolair because of the insanely high cost of the drug and that doctors were prescribing this dangerous drug for anyone that even slightly wheezed once. Here's the truth: Yes, the drug has a 'Black Box' warning from the FDA. Yes, it very slightly increases your chance of cancer. Yes, some folks on it have had strokes and heart attacks. But, as my favorite pulmonologist used to say that the population of Xolair users were much sicker than the average asthmatic to start with so you were automatically going to see higher rates of heart attacks and strokes. Add in the fact that epipens can bring on both ...