Page 149 - The Memory Program How to Prevent Memory Loss and Enhance Memory Power

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Regulation of prescription medications is more lax in nearly all other countries compared to the
United States. If a medication does not have major side effects, most European regulatory
bodies will approve it as a prescription medication even if it hasn't been firmly proven to work
in treating the illness.
Alternative medications are not regulated by the FDA, but they are lightly regulated in a few
countries.

These differences explain why a number of medications available in European and Latin
American countries, including Mexico, are not available in the United States. Several medications
that are approved in European countries— for example, nimodipine, which is used to treat vascular
disease in the brain and is prescribed for dementia by many doctors— have failed to show superiority
over placebo in American clinical studies conducted according to more stringent FDA standards.
Germany regulates alternative medications, which places it a step ahead of the United States in this
area. Talk of uniform international regulations has been making the rounds for decades, but no
country has been willing to give up its prize turf in controlling the manufacture and flow of these
money-making drugs. It is easier to generate a common Euro currency than to create a single
regulatory body to approve new medications for all countries in the European Union.

FDA Does Not Approve Medications to Prevent Age-Related Memory Loss

The FDA does not recognize age-related memory loss to be an illness and is hence unwilling to
approve any medication to prevent or treat this condition. This attitude has worked against research
development efforts for both pharmaceutical agents and alternative remedies, because no company
will invest tens of millions of dollars in clinical research on a compound or natural substance if at the
end of this effort there is no hope of regulatory approval. This situation has led to most studies of
new medications being conducted in patients with Alzheimer's, an FDA-recognized disease, rather
than in people with mild memory loss.