medicine

As negotiators meet on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in Atlanta, AARP is again urging them to be mindful of the consumers who depend on prescription drugs to manage their health conditions. We continue to have serious concerns with the direction of the TPP negotiations on key issues that will have long-lasting effects on access to affordable prescriptions in the U.S. and around the world.

It’s no secret that chronic pain is a common problem among older adults. According to the National Institutes of Health, 50 percent of older adults who live on their own suffer from chronic pain, and that number jumps to 75 percent or higher for seniors living in care facilities.

AARP continues to voice its serious concerns about the current draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive trade agreement that will affect millions of people here in the U.S. and abroad and could set an unfortunate precedent for future trade agreements. The draft agreement contains provisions that add to the profits of the brand-name pharmaceutical industry at the expense of patients and older Americans. In fact, some of the TPP provisions run counter to current U.S. laws that are in place to protect consumers’ access to affordable medicines.

If you have trouble swallowing pills, you’re not alone.

By Nicole Duritz

This piece originally ran in the Huffington Post and was written by Leigh Purvis and Debra B. Whitman.

We hear a lot about how older Americans have difficulties with their prescription medications. That makes it all the more disturbing when a pharmaceutical company takes advantage of them by promoting a drug as safe and effective for a certain condition - like, say, dementia - when in fact it may not be.

The MacArthur Foundation has announced its 2013 MacArthur Fellows. Each year, the foundation provides stipends of $625,000 - popularly known as "genius grants" - to encourage "people of outstanding talent" to pursue their ambitions in the arts, sciences, education, social entrepreneurship and other fields.

If you could take a pill and prevent further aging, would you take it? Besides extending the length of your life, what if the pill could protect you from cancer, Alzheimer's disease and type 2 diabetes? You might even find your skin looking younger.

A study published yesterday in the Archives of Internal Medicine shows many prescription drugs could have a longer shelf life than assumed, in some cases much longer. But while the results could have important implications for drug companies, researchers are quick to caution consumers against applying the findings to their own medicine cabinets.