Rx Drugs = LEADING KILLER !!!

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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