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Are you involved in knowing what the meds are that you take? Well you should be 'cause we simple can't trust our doctors to give us the right drugs anymore
"Prescription drugs taken as directed kill 100,000 Americans a year. That's one person every five minutes. How did we get here? "
"The study estimating that 100,000 Americans die each year from their prescriptions looked only at deaths from known side effects. That is, those deaths didn’t happen because the doctor made a mistake and prescribed the wrong drug, or the pharmacist made a mistake in filling the prescription, or the patient accidentally took too much. Unfortunately, thousands of patients die from such mistakes too, but this study looked only at deaths where our present medical system wouldn’t fault anyone. Tens of thousands of people are dying every year from drugs they took just as the doctor directed. This shows you how dangerous medications are."
I can hear my daddy rolling over in his grave right now. He had a doctorate in pharmacology, and would regularly call and question the area doctors on the prescriptions that their patients brought into our drug store.
His mantra was "one has to remember that doctors are practicing medicine, and they are practicing it on their patients."
I somehow doubt that the pharmacists today are practicing the same vigilance, as I have caught several mistakes on prescriptions filled just for my own family.
Its always amusing to call the RPh's on it, as they have this lordly air as I start to question them, and then as I explain my background, they wither.
My sis is a doctor, and my mom has a masters in nursing. I was supposed to be an RPh, too, just couldnt cut the chemistry classes.
My uncle also told me things that would make your skin crawl (he was a pharamacist ...... in the days before computer crosschecking.....still is but very close to retiring). He also was furious when ads started coming out targeting the general population.
...and every time you turn on the TV news or pick up a newspaper, there's yet another one of these "wonder drugs" that's being recalled. The latest one that I heard of is the diabetes drug Avandia causing heart problems. The osteoporosis drugs like Fosamax cause acid reflux. Acid reflux drugs cause bone loss. Buyer beware when it comes to prescription drugs.
its really quite impossible to discuss this without having access to the supposed study from which these figures come from, and for which the author of the website article doesn't cite the reference.
of course it's true that people die from the effects of drugs. the only truly safe drug is one without any effect (good or bad) at all. this is why drug labeling is so important, and why the burden is upon the manufacturer to demonstrate that the balance between the benefit and risk of the drug is appropriate given its intended use. furthermore, since this article seems to be specifically calling out prescription drugs, there is an additional burden on the doctor writing the prescription to run through the important potential safety concerns of that drug.
finally, all mentally competent individuals have a personal responsibility to read the pack, label and any additional information provided with the drug. it is there for a reason. ignore it at your peril.
its really quite impossible to discuss this without having access to the supposed study from which these figures come from, and for which the author of the website article doesn't cite the reference.
of course it's true that people die from the effects of drugs. the only truly safe drug is one without any effect (good or bad) at all. this is why drug labeling is so important, and why the burden is upon the manufacturer to demonstrate that the balance between the benefit and risk of the drug is appropriate given its intended use. furthermore, since this article seems to be specifically calling out prescription drugs, there is an additional burden on the doctor writing the prescription to run through the important potential safety concerns of that drug.
finally, all mentally competent individuals have a personal responsibility to read the pack, label and any additional information provided with the drug. it is there for a reason. ignore it at your peril.
Define "mentally competent".
Doctors have literally TOLD us to trust them and to NOT play doctor. That LAST thing we want to do or are able to do when we are sick is to research drug side effects.
when you are sick, you are unable to make decisions concerning your treatment?
you may not want to, but you should. every individual has ultimate personal responsibility for their own health. sure, you can hand that responsibility over to someone else (e.g. a doctor), but don't then complain if they make a decision you don't agree with.
and by the way, im not talking about research. im talking about reading the label of any drug you may be taking. seems a pretty small price to pay to be informed.
It needs to become common knowledge that all drugs--including the over the counter ones--have risks as well as benefits. As a consumer, you need to weigh these and make a decision as to whether the benefits you will get from the drug are worth the risks. For example, the prilosec I am taking right now, while it helps with lowering acid production, is causing me to become sick more often. Right now, it is worth it to me to become sick so I do not have to experience the pain that I get when I do not take it.
Regarding the Fosamax risks and benefits, patients need to question whether the possibility of having acid-reflux is worth the benefit of lowering fracture risk. It's all a give and take, and it is factual that there is no drug out there that has all the benefits and no risk.
The study mentioned originally came out about 12 years ago. It was a meta-analysis --- a study in which information from several different studies is combined and recalculated. Yes, I have read it. Most of the studies were performed before 1994, and many were done as long ago as 1964.
The difficulty with studies like that is that not all of the individual studies were performed the same way. That makes it difficult to compare them.
In the studies done in the 1990s, there were a grand total of 3 or 4 deaths from adverse drug reactions. In all of the studies there were a total of about 78 deaths. Seventy five of those deaths were from studies done prior to 1973. This information from those 78 deaths was statistically extrapolated to estimate the annual number of deaths from adverse drug reactions.
The question the study cannot answer is how many of these fatal adverse reactions were preventable. The details of the deaths are not reported in the study. For example, how many of the fatal reactions occurred in seriously ill patients for whom the culprit drug was perhaps the best alternative to treat the underlying illness? How many of these patients were so sick that they likely would have died anyway? Were they very old? Did they have malignancies and die from complications of chemotherapy? Prior to 1973, not many people survived cancers, even with chemo.
As kronenborg said, if you are offered a medication, you should know what it is intended to do, what the side effects could be, and what potential serious complications could occur. You and your physician then decide whether the benefits outweigh the risks.
By the way, I have a son who is a survivor of childhood leukemia, thanks to a cocktail of potent drugs, any one of which could have killed him. He was diagnosed in 1989. Last week he became a father! God bless the drug companies that developed those medications!
I read an article recently, a bit of a chicken little article, that pharma is starting to rethink its research strategy, or moving away from research in some instances. For example, GlaxoSmithKline, the makers of Avandia, produce non-pharm related products like mouth wash IIRC. According to the article, which I can dig up later, their young CEO has been moving them in alternative directions that don't inolve costly research. After reading about Avandia it's not surprising. We're living so much longer now and surely it's difficult to deal with side effects on vulnerable aging populations. Even with personalized medicine coming to the stage, there are simply a plethora of unknown challenges.
I was just reading this abstract...
"Why is big Pharma getting out of antibacterial drug discovery?
"Since the advent of the antibiotic era in the late 1940s drug discovery and development has evolved into an expensive, time consuming, cumbersome and bureaucratic process involving multiple interest groups such as pharmaceutical manufacturers, governmental regulatory authorities, patent officers, academic and clinical researchers and trial lawyers. It would seem that the least involved among the interest groups are the consumers of health care themselves. Politicians and the public alike complain loudly about drug prices although fewer and fewer new therapies are being developed. The cost and complexities of drug discovery and development have shifted the investment equation away from the development of drugs targeting short course therapies for acute diseases and towards long-term treatment of chronic conditions. Coupled with the failure of large investments into target-based approaches to produce novel antibacterial agents, companies large and small have exited from this field despite a growing clinical need."
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Really old study
