From: Ian Goddard (igoddard@erols.com)
Date: Wed Apr 15 1998 - 11:47:17 MDT
(please forgive duplication -- last had corrupted text)
When thinking about federal (FDA/DEA) drug control, think
about this. The Washington Post (04/15/98) [1] reports:
PRESCRIBED DRUGS' TOLL IS AMONG DEADLIEST
By Rick Weiss
More than 2 million Americans become
seriously ill every year because of
toxic reactions to correctly prescribed
medicines taken properly, and 106,000
die from those reactions, a new study
concludes. That surprisingly high num-
ber makes drug side effects at least
the sixth, and perhaps even the fourth,
most common cause of death in this country.
The analysis, the largest and most
complete of its kind, suggests that
one in 15 hospital patients in the
United States can expect to suffer
from a serious reaction to prescription
or over-the-counter medicine, and about
5 percent of these will die as a result.
The Study was just published today in the Journal of the
American Medical Association. From the JAMA website [2]:
ADVERSE DRUG REACTIONS MAY
CAUSE OVER 100,000 DEATHS AMONG
HOSPITALIZED PATIENTS EACH YEAR
Study suggests adverse drug reactions
are among the top causes of death in U.S.
CHICAGO - Adverse drug reactions (ADRs)
in U.S. hospitals may be responsible
for more than 100,000 deaths nationwide
each year, making it one of the leading
causes of death, according to an article
in the April 14 issue of The Journal of
American Medical Association (JAMA).
Bruce H. Pomeranz, M.D., Ph.D., and col-
leagues from the University of Toronto,
analyzed 39 studies of ADRs in the United
States to estimate the incidence of serious
and fatal adverse drug reactions in hospital
patients. To obtain overall incidence rates
of ADRs in hospitalized patients, the re-
searchers combined the incidence of ADRs
in the hospital and the incidence of ADRs
causing admission to the hospital.
IAN: Important to note: the study seems only to have
included drugs prescribed to hospitalized patients,
yet I would expect that most prescription drugs are
prescribed to patients NOT hospitalized. If 5% of
hospitalized patients prescribed a drug will die
from that drug, and if hospital prescriptions
account for (just a guess) 20% of all prescriptions,
then there could be upwards of 500,000 people dying
every year from prescription drugs (just a guestimate)!
-- SOME HOLISTIC-COMPARATIVE THINKING --
Now consider how a couple people died from contaminated
tryptophan and the FDA bans it overnight, paving the
way for Prozac to dominate the serotonin-enhancement
market without a cheap non-prescription alternative.
Now consider how one person dies of a heart attack
after taking an herbal supplement containing the
herb ephedra and the FDA goes into hysteria that
the herb must be banned, meanwhile all the FDA-
APPROVED drugs have over 100,000 Americans on
an assembly line to the graveyard every year!
There is something seriously wrong here, and
the factor that makes it all logical is power:
the Govt will use any pretext to gain more power.
Now think about illicit drugs. Cannabis for example
kills nobody per year. All other illicit drugs kill
around 5,000 per year, and we're talking about impure
drugs of strengths that vary from one "basement batch"
to the next, which is a leading reason they kill any-
body. Yet we are led to believe that they are illegal
because they kill people... BULLSH*T!! They are illegal
because they cause "wrong thinking" and "wrong feelings,"
because they compete with alcohol, tobacco, Dupont,...
We still live in medieval times, our lives controlled by
barbaric and tyrannical thugs willing to resort to any
level of aggression or fraud to stuff The People into
a dungeon of darkness for the power-profits of a few.
________________________________________________________
[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/digest/nat5.htm
That URL will change in a day or so, do a search thereafter.
[2] http://www.ama-assn.org/sci-pubs/sci-news/1997/pres_rel.htm#jma71005
WEBSITES ON HEALTH AND DRUG FREEDOM
Advocates for Health Freedom: http://www.iahf.com/blowup.html
Institute for Health Freedom: www.ihf-healthfreedom.org
Citizens Voice for Health Rights: www.freedomofchoicecanada.org
Life Extension Foundation: lef@lef.org
Drug Policy Foundation: http://www.drugpolicy.org
Lindesmith Center: http://www.lindesmith.org
Drug Reform Coordination Network: http://www.drcnet.org
National Org. for Reform of Marijuana Laws: http://www.norml.com
My Relevant Reports: http://www.erols.com/igoddard/journal.htm
****************************************************************
VISIT Ian Williams Goddard ----> http://www.erols.com/igoddard
________________________________________________________________
REV. ROGER WILLIAMS ---> http://www.erols.com/igoddard/roger.htm
________________________________________________________________
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