Two drugs aren't better than one

[Guest guest]

rom: " WC Douglass " <realhealth

Daily Dose - Trials and errors

Mon, 11 Jul 2005 07:15:00 -0400

Daily Dose

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July 11, 2005

 

 

Two drugs aren't better than one

 

Anyone who buys into the mainstream's belief that the process by which

drugs are tested on humans (called clinical trials, among other

things) is effective and always safe is suffering from a severe bout

of either amnesia, naiveté, or both.

 

Drug trials are stopped in midstream all the time because of side

effects or unexpected reactions - some of which have fatal

consequences. For a vivid recent reminder of this, all one need do is

recall the anti-depressant/teenage suicide scandal from 2003. If I'm

not mistaken, at least one antidepressant drug study was halted at

around that time after some of the test subjects ended up dead.

 

And who could forget the FDA's shutting down of a 2002 study of HRT

(Hormone Replacement Therapy) drugs after evidence surfaced that the

medications increased subjects' risk of ovarian cancer, stoke, and

heart disease - I wrote all about this in the July 1, 2003 Daily Dose.

Now, something similar has happened in a study of chemotherapy drugs

for breast cancer.

 

According to an article in a recent edition of the Journal of the

American Medical Association, a five-year French study of a

combination of two common chemotherapy drugs typically prescribed for

advanced breast cancer was halted after 4 test subjects - all of them

from the two-drug test group - died after developing low white blood

cell counts, fever and digestive difficulties.

 

Similar, yet non-fatal symptoms were developed by a full 41% of the

women in the two-drug group, as compared to just 7% among the test

subjects as a whole. Weighing this data, the study's authors stopped

the research after concluding that the combination of the two drugs

was too toxic. No, really?!? What a leap of logic!

 

Naturally, instead of concurring with the opinion of the study's

authors, the President-elect of the American Cancer Society

recommended that the two-drug combination not be abandoned, but

instead administered along with a third drug designed to boost

white-cell counts, an Associated Press story on the debacle maintains.

Isn't that just typical of the U.S. medical establishment - the notion

that the solution to drug-related illness can't possibly be less

drugs, but MORE?

 

I'm telling you: Until we do away with this kind of thinking, a lot

more of us are going to end up on the slab instead of on the mend...

 

 

 

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Elevating medicine?

 

Back on February 28th, I wrote to you about a major-league screw-up by

a pair of Duke University-affiliated hospitals. To recap, a local

newspaper broke a story in early 2005 about how the two North Carolina

medical centers accidentally " sterilized " thousands of surgical

instruments over a 2-month period in late 2004 using not antibacterial

detergent, but rather with elevator hydraulic fluid that had been

drained by repairmen into several empty detergent containers.

 

Now, this story's starting to get some national attention. Why?

Because despite the Duke officials' desperate downplaying of possible

health risks among the nearly 4000 patients operated on with these

instruments, dozens of these poor victims have reported bizarre,

unexplainable heath issues in the months since their surgeries - some

of them requiring hospitalization.

 

According to a recent AP story, at least 50 such patients have

retained legal counsel about their complications, and two lawsuits

have been filed so far relating to the incident. Ironically, neither

of these suits have targeted the hospital's blatant negligence, but

rather are aimed at the elevator manufacturer and the detergent

supplier! These entities, though clearly not directly at fault, are

apparently much easier to sue than a bunch of deep-pocketed,

stonewalling hospitals...

 

If this doesn't point to what a litigious morass our health-care

system has become, I don't know what would.

 

Trying my best to stay " uplifting, "

 

William Campbell Douglass II, MD

 

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