Prescription drugs 16,400% more deadly than terrorists

[Guest guest]

Prescription drugs 16,400% more deadly than terrorists by: Jessica Fraser

 

 

 

 

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 errors 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 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 dysfunction 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 can’t 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-counter 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 overhauling 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.