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Deadly Prescription Drugs
Jessica Fraser Tells All
Statistics prove prescription drugs are 16,400% more deadly than terrorists! Read ALL about it!
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Prescription Drugs Deadlier Than Terrorists
By Jessica Fraser, www.newstarget.com
Statistics prove prescription drugs are 16,400% more deadly than terrorists
America was rudely awakened to a new kind of danger on September 11, 2001:
Terrorism. The attacks that day left 2,996 people dead, including the
passengers on the four commercial airliners that were used as weapons. Many
feel it was the most tragic day in U.S. history.
Four commercial jets crashed that day. But what if six jumbo jets crashed
every day in the United States, claiming the lives of 783,936 people every
year? That would certainly qualify as a massive tragedy, wouldn't it?
Well, forget "what if." The tragedy is happening right now. Over 750,000
people actually do die in the United States every year, although not from
plane crashes. They die from something far more common and rarely perceived by
the public as dangerous: modern medicine.
According to the groundbreaking 2003 medical report Death by
Medicine, by Drs. Gary Null, Carolyn Dean, Martin Feldman, Debora Rasio
and Dorothy Smith, 783,936 people in the United States die every year from
conventional medicine mistakes. That's the equivalent of six jumbo jet crashes
a day for an entire year. But where is the media attention for this tragedy?
Where is the government support for stopping these medical mistakes before
they happen?
After 9/11, the White House gave rise to the Department of Homeland
Security, designed to prevent terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Since its
inception, billions of dollars have been poured into it. The 2006 budget
allots $34.2 billion to the DHS, a number that has come down slightly from the
$37.7 billion budget of 2003.
According to the study led by Null, which involved a painstaking review of
thousands of medical records, the United States spends $282 billion annually
on deaths due to medical mistakes, or iatrogenic deaths. And that's a
conservative estimate; only a fraction of medical records are reported,
according to the study. Actual medical mistakes are likely to be 20 times
higher than the reported number because doctors fear retaliation for those
mistakes. The American public heads to the doctor's office or the hospital
time and again, oblivious of the alarming danger they're heading into. The
public knows that medical errors occur, but they assume that errors are
unusual, isolated events. Unfortunately, by accepting conventional medicine,
patients voluntarily continue to walk into the leading cause of death in
America.
According to a 1995 U.S. iatrogenic report, "Over a million patients are
injured in U.S. hospitals each year, and approximately 280,000 die annually as
a result of these injuries. Therefore, the iatrogenic death rate dwarfs the
annual automobile accident mortality rate of 45,000 and accounts for more
deaths than all other accidents combined." This report was issued 10 years
ago, when America had 34 million fewer citizens and drug company scandals like
the vioxx recall were yet to occur. Today, health care comprises 15.5 percent
of the United States' gross national product, with spending reaching $1.4
trillion in 2004.
Since Americans spend so much money on health care, they should be getting
a high quality of care, right? Unfortunately, that's not the case. Of the
783,936 annual deaths due to conventional medical mistakes, about 106,000 are
from prescription drugs, according to Death by Medicine. That also is a
conservative number. Some experts estimate it should be more like 200,000
because of underreported cases of adverse drug reactions.
Americans today are used to fixing problems the quick way even when it
comes to their health. Thus, they rely heavily on prescription drugs to fix
their diseases. For every conceivable ailment real or not chances are
there's a pricey prescription drug to "treat" it. Chances are even better that
their drug of choice comes chock full of side effects.
The problem is, prescription drugs don't treat diseases; they merely cover
the symptoms. U.S. physicians provide allopathic health care that is, they
care for disease, not health. So, the over-prescription of drugs and
medications is designed to treat disease instead of preventing it. And because
there are so many drugs available, unforeseen adverse drug reactions are all
too common, which leads to the highly conservative annual prescription drug
death rate of 106,000. Keep in mind that these numbers came before the Vioxx
scandal, and Cox-2 inhibitor drugs could ultimately end up killing tens of
thousands more.
American medical patients are getting the short end of a rather raw deal
when it comes to prescription drugs. Medicine is a high-dollar, highly
competitive business. But it shouldn't be. Null's report cites the five most
important aspects of health that modern medicine ignores in favor of the
almighty dollar: Stress, lack of exercise, high calorie intake, highly
processed foods and environmental toxin exposure. All these things are putting
Americans in such poor health that they run to the doctor for treatment. But
instead of doctors treating the causes of their poor health, such as putting
them on a strict diet and exercise regimen, they stuff them full of
prescription drugs to cover their symptoms. Using this inherently faulty
system of medical treatment , it's no wonder so many Americans die from
prescription drugs. They're not getting better; they're just popping drugs to
make their symptoms temporarily go away.
But not all doctors subscribe to this method of "treatment." In fact, many
doctors are just as angry as the public should be, charging that scientific
medicine is "for sale" to the highest bidder which, more often than not, end
up being pharmaceutical companies. The pharmaceutical industry is a
multi-trillion dollar business. Companies spend billions on advertising and
promotions for prescription drugs. Who can remember the last time they watched
television and weren't bombarded with ads for pills treating everything from
erectile disfunctiom to sleeplessness? And who has ever been to a doctor's
office or hospital and not seen every pen, notepad and post-it bearing the
logo of some prescription drug?
Medical experts claim that patients' requests for certain drugs have no
effect on the number of prescriptions written for that drug. Pharmaceutical
companies claim their drug ads are "educational" to the public. The public
believes the FDA reviews all the ads and only allows the safest and most
effective drug ads to reach the public. It's a clever system: Pharmaceutical
companies influence the public to ask for prescription drugs, the public asks
their physicians to prescribe them certain drugs, and doctors acquiesce to
their patients' requests. Everyone's happy, right? Not quite, since the
prescription drug death toll continues to rise.
The public seems to genuinely believe that drugs advertised on TV are safe,
in spite of the plethora of side effects listed by the commercial's narrator,
ranging from diarrhea to death. Patients feel justified in asking their
physicians to prescribe them a particular drug they've seen on TV, since it
surely must be safe or it wouldn't have been advertised. Remember all those TV
ads heralding the wonders of Vioxx? One might wonder how many lives could have
been spared if patients didn't see the ad on TV and request a prescription
from their doctors.
But advertising isn't the only tool the pharmaceutical industry uses to
influence medicine. Null's study cites an ABC report that said pharmaceutical
companies spend over $2 billion sending doctors to more than 314,000 events
every year. While doctors are riding the dollar of pharmaceutical companies,
enjoying all the many perks of these "events," how likely are they to question
the validity of drug companies or their products?
Admittedly, not all doctors reside in the pockets of the pharmaceutical
companies. Some are downright angry at the situation, and angry on behalf of
an unaware public. Major conflicts of interest exist between the American
public, the medical community and the pharmaceutical industry. And although
the public suffers the most from this conflict, it is the least informed. The
public gets the short end of the stick and they don't even know it. That is
why the pharmaceutical industry remains a multi-trillion dollar business.
Prescription drugs are only a part of the U.S. healthcare system's
miserable failings. In fact, outpatient deaths, bedsore deaths and
malnutrition deaths each account for higher death rates than adverse drug
reactions. The problems run deep and cannot be remedied without drastic,
widespread change in the system's money and ethics.
The first issue money is the main reason the medical industry cannot
seem to change. Prescribing more drugs and recommending more surgeries means
more profits. Getting more drugs approved by the FDA, regardless of their
safety, means more money for the pharmaceutical industry. As the healthcare
system stands today, physicians and drug companies can't seem to pass up
earning loads of money, even if a few hundred thousand people lose their lives
in the process. Even in drastic cases of deadly drugs, everyone involved has a
scapegoat: Drug companies can blame the FDA for approving their product and
the doctors for over-prescribing it, and doctors can blame the patients for
wanting it and not properly weighing the risks.
What ultimately arises is a question of ethics. In layman's terms, ethics
are the rules or moral guidelines that govern the conduct of people or
professions. Some ethics are ingrained from childhood, but some are
specifically set forth. For example, nearly all medical schools have their new
doctors take a modern form of the Hippocratic Oath. While few versions are
identical, none include setting aside proper medical care in favor of
money-making practices.
On the research side of the issue, "Death by Medicine" cites an ABC report
that says clinical trials funded by pharmaceutical companies show a 90 percent
chance that a drug will be perceived as effective, whereas clinical trials not
funded by drug companies show only a 50 percent chance that a drug will be
perceived as effective. "It appears that money cant buy you love, but it can
buy you any 'scientific' result you want," writes Null and his team of
researchers.
The government spends upwards of $30 billion a year on homeland security.
Such spending seems important. Since 2001, 2,996 people in the United States
have died from terrorism all as a result of the 9/11 attacks. In that same
period of time, 490,000 people have died from prescription drugs, not counting
the Vioxx scandal. That means that prescription drugs in this country are
at least 16,400 percent deadlier than terrorism. Again, those are the
conservative numbers. A more realistic number, which would include deaths from
over-the- colunter drugs, makes drug consumption 32,000 percent deadlier than
terrorism. But the scope of "Death by Medicine" is even wider. Conventional
medicine, including unnecessary surgeries, bedsores and medical errors, is
104,700 percent deadlier than terrorism. Yet, our government's attention and
money is not put into reforming health care.
Couldn't a little chunk of the homeland security money be better spent on
over- hauling the corrupt U.S. healthcare system, the leading cause of death
in America? Couldn't we forfeit the color-coded threat system in favor of
stricter guidelines on medical research and prescription drugs? No one is
attempting to say that terrorism in the world is not a problem, especially for
a high-profile country like the United States. No one is saying that the
people who died on 9/11 didn't matter or weren't horribly wronged by the
terrorists that day. But there are more dangerous things in the United States
being falsely represented as safe and healthy, when, in reality, they are
deadly. The corruption in the pharmaceutical industry and in America's
healthcare system poses a far greater threat to the health, safety and welfare
of Americans today than terrorism.
If the Bush Administration really wants to save lives -- a lot of lives --
it needs look no further than the chemical war has been declared on Americans
by Big Pharma.
Overview:
Statistics prove that prescription drugs are 16,400% deadlier than terrorists.
How does this fact affect YOUR life?
Read more from Jessica Frser:
"American Diabetes Association peddling nutritional nonsense while accepting money from manufacturer of candy and sodas".
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