Deaths from adverse drug reactions triple between 1998 and 2005. A new review reveals more dangers than ever from even acetaminophen, the main ingredient in Tylenol. Are we now taking our life in our hands by accepting the drug recommendations from our well intentioned doctors? If you suffer from auto-immune illnesses, use pain relievers with acetaminophen in them, take birth control pills or hormone replacement therapy or insulin for diabetes…your medications top the list!
So now your choice when you go to your doctor’s office for help is an ineffective medication designed to only suppress your symptoms…or death! Last Monday, the medical journal, Archives of Internal Medicine reported after reviewing reports from pharmaceutical companies, health professionals and the public that adverse drug reactions and deaths had tripled from 1998 to 2005. Talk about taking your life into your own hands when you go to the doctor!
But, it does underscore why alternative medicine is growing at an unprecedented rate. Pharmaceutical companies spending about a billion dollars per every new drug to test and get to market, rush their new project upon the public and most times without sufficient scrutiny from the FDA.
Drugs are tested for short periods of time, never enough to see what the long term consequence might be. Kinda like testing cigarettes for the first time on a population of a few thousand test subjects for six months and declaring they do not cause cancer.
From 1998 to 2005, there were 467,809 serious adverse events reported. The annual number of reports rose from 34,966 in 1998 to 89,842 in 2005 while the number of fatal adverse drug events increased from 5,519 to 15,107 in the same time frame. The study reported that the relative increase in serious reports was four times faster than the growth in total U.S. outpatient prescriptions.
Consider this increase in light of many drugs taken off the market in the same time frame, Vioxx being the most famous. The study found the two top drugs listed in fatal reports were powerful painkillers oxycodone and fentanyl and were attributed to about 9,000 deaths.
Most shocking was the presence of acetaminophen in the Top 15…that’s the main ingredient in Tylenol! Also included were the immune system modifier Remicade, estrogen-containing products, used in birth-control pills and hormone-replacement therapy, and insulin, a drug used to treat diabetes.
From an alternative perspective, we have known about adverse drug reactions for many years, but this stunning increase surprises even us. Bottom line: Your medications are not safe to take. They all have side effects, that’s why they all have those long inserts with the fine print…to inform you of the use, dose and dangers…but we never read it, do we?
Patient beware…just another reason, not to be against drugs, but to be against the unnecessary use of drugs. We all have alternatives to traditional health care. Search there first.
