Dangerous Pharmaceutical Side Effects

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Dangerous Pharmaceutical Side Effects

 

An excellent story was posted on the Internet recently titled Too

Little Is Known About The Long-Term Effects Of The Most Popular

Drugs. It was written by Thomas Moore and posted on the

Washingtonian Online Health & Medicine web site.

 

Here are just a few of the highlights from the story. " An NIH study

with 42,000

participants found that the blood pressure drug Cardura-one of a

family of alpha blockers taken by 1 million people was so

ineffective at preventing strokes and heart failure that patients

taking Cardura needed to be switched to more effective medicationåá

 

Although new drugs are usually studied in thousands of patients for

short periods, the international standard provides that drugs

intended for lifetime use should be tested only in about 100 people

for periods of one year or more.

 

Although Food and Drug Administration requirements for some drugs

are stricter, US law does

not provide for the long-term testing of drugs, before or after

approval for marketingåá Even when lives are at stake, drug

companies and other health authorities repeatedly have failed to

warn doctors and patients about newly discovered problems or ensure

they halt treatment or switch to a better drug.

 

The failure to provide for long-term testing of drugs and to make

wise use of the

results constitutes perhaps the single most dangerous flaw in a

system intended to protect patients from unnecessary harm from

prescription drugsåá

 

A system so rife with examples of drugs that

fail to deliver on their promises is a system in crisis. Add the

fact that so many who take these drugs are exposed to unnecessary

risks of major events such as heart attack and stroke, and the need

for reform is clear. "

 

A story appeared in a June 1998 edition of the Orlando Sentinel that

exposes some of the fraud within the pharmaceutical industry in

approving new drugs.

 

The story was written by Stephen Fried in a

special to the Washington Post and was titled Inside The

FDA.

 

" Agency officers know, for instance, that the organization

doesn't actually test new drugs; the pharmaceutical companies do,

and submit their results pretty much on the honor code. They know

that drugs are tested on no more than 3,000 to 4,000 people before

approval, and that many drug-safety problems will not show up in

that small of a sample. Medical officers also know that the system

for catching these problems after approval is woefully inadequate. "

 

This story verifies that we are dealing with a self-regulated

industry with no real checks and balances in place.

 

Another story that appeared in the Orlando Sentinel on July 4, 2001

reported new risks associated with the cancer drug tamoxifen.

 

" New research suggests that women taking the breast-cancer drug

tamoxifen

have an increased chance of getting a more aggressive form of the

disease if a new tumor appears in their previously healthy breaståá

The new research found tamoxifen users who developed new tumors were

five times more likely than nonusers to get a more deadly kind of

tumor ̦ referred to as estrogen negative. "

 

Then we come to one of the most abused pharmaceutical drug on the

market today with terrible side effects. It's a relatively new pain

medicine called OxyContin. This drug contains a powerful alkaloid

derived from opium.

 

It has replaced cocaine, heroin and ecstasy as the number one killer

in the State of Florida. People suffering from

tremendous pain have become junkies on this drug.

 

OxyContin sales in the year 2000 alone were over a billion dollars.

OxyContin is fast

becoming the new drug of choice in America. The tablets are

manufactured in a time-released delivery system so the mind-altering

effects of the opium alkaloid are not experienced by the users. They

are designed to deliver painkilling effectiveness for between a 12

and 24 hour period.

 

On the street users either chew the tablets,

crush them and snort the powder, or boil down the tablets and inject

it intravenously because it bypasses the time-released system and

delivers a powerful euphoric, heroin-like punch.

 

Entire towns and neighborhoods are dealing with problems associated

with OxyContin.

The Roanoke Times ran a story on August 16, 2000 that reported

OxyContin to be the worst problem seen in the community. " Tazewell

County's prosecutor has charged more than 150 people in the last

year with felonies associated with the addictive painkilleråá

 

Tazewell County Commonwealth's Attorney Dennis Lee called abuse of

OxyContin an epidemicåá Andy Anderson, a narcotics detective with

the Pulaski Police Department, estimated that 90 percent of the

people in Pulaski who admit to such crimes as breaking and entering,

shoplifting, forgery or stealing checks said they committed the

crimes to get money to finance their OxyContin addiction. "

 

Conclusion

There is much more that can be said about the harmful effects of

pharmaceutical medicine. To cover all the facts in great detail

would take a large book. The purpose of this story has been to

summarize the issues and enlighten you to the roots of the

pharmaceutical industry and to show that there is a sinister force

behind the increase of prescribed drugs.

 

This story offers no

medical advice other than warning readers to Beware Of The Sorcerers

Medicine. I hope you have been educated by this story and that it

prompts you to take a closer look at the pharmaceutical industry

before buying into their propaganda. Look for more pharmaceutical

expose stories in future issues of CRUSADOR.

 

http://www.thehealthcrusader.com/pgs/archives/article_2003_02_21_2759

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