The number of drug company lobbyists increased from year 2001 to 2002, along with the amount spent on lobbying activities. In all, the drug industry spent close to $100 million--a record amount.

Drug companies are most interested in influencing issues related to prescription-drug benefits for Medicare recipients, generic drugs, and imported prescription drugs from Canada. I hear that prescription Drug coverage is being dropped from many corporate health plans. Partly due to expense and partly due to drug side effects.

Women at Greater Risk of Drug Reactions
Taking more than one medication at a time is always a risky business, since it increases the likelihood of an adverse drug reaction (ADR) - a harmful, unintended, or unwanted effect of a medication. In the United States, ADRs are a leading cause of illness and account for as many as 106,000 deaths annually.

Prescription Drugs Anyone?
by
Raymond Francis
Breathing.com FAQ Medical Advisory Panel Member.
Prescription drugs are one of America’s leading causes of disease and death. The problem with prescription drugs is very simple…they do nothing to cure disease. All they do is suppress the symptoms of disease by disrupting normal cellular functions. Abnormal cell function is the very definition of disease, and since prescription drugs cause our cells to malfunction, then…

Yes, drugs cause disease, but we obscure this fact by calling these diseases "side effects." Ironically, the "side effects" are often more dangerous than the disease being treated in the first place. A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that in one year over two million hospitalized patients suffered serious drug reactions, resulting in 106,000 deaths. Some side effects! But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Too many adverse reactions cause public concern and scrutiny, so just imagine a hospital’s incentive to understate them. Another article in JAMA estimated that only 1 in 20 reactions are reported. In truth, tens of millions are injured and an estimated 400,000 are killed every year by these dangerous poisons.  Anyone taking a prescription drug will be harmed to some degree by these drug-caused diseases.

Consider that disrupting even one cell function will ultimately have a negative effect on the entire body. A single prescription drug can disrupt multiple cell functions causing thousands of biochemical changes. Introducing a second drug can cause tens of thousands of changes, and a third can produce hundreds of thousands. Since the average patient over 60 is on four drugs, you can begin to comprehend the extent of the biochemical chaos being created. This is not healthy! Very often a second drug is prescribed to suppress the problems caused by the first, and then a third drug to suppress the symptoms caused by the first two, and so on.

Statistics show that prescriptions for antibiotics are still on the rise, despite medical journals warning doctors to cut down on them. Excessive antibiotic use has bred "superbugs" that the strongest antibiotics cannot kill. Right now, there are people sick with infections that are immune to all known antibiotics. Another commonly ignored "side effect" of antibiotics is that they also destroy normal gut flora, leading to maldigestion, malnutrition, and cellular toxicity. The damage antibiotics can do is scary, often permanent, and getting worse as doctors continue to overprescribe them.

Nobel Prize winning chemist Linus Pauling predicted that the use of toxic chemicals to suppress disease symptoms, which he called a toximolecular approach, was a blind alley that would lead nowhere. Where it has lead is to a catastrophically expensive and ineffective disease-care system, where people are killed and injured daily, where they remain chronically ill, and where the costs are projected to double in the next ten years. When someone is sick, they are already in toxic overload. Why compound their problems by giving them more toxins? Pauling proposed an orthomolecular approach where one provides molecules that are natural and helpful in supporting and restoring normal cell functions, allowing the body to heal and restore itself to health.

If you are now on prescription drugs, recognize that you are choosing to take them, and that there are safer, more natural, and more effective alternatives. You may want to find yourself another doctor, one practicing orthomolecular or preventive medicine, who will address the causes of your problem and help you get well, rather than prescribing poison to suppress your symptoms. To make a sick person well, you have give their cells all the things they need to function normally, and keep them away from the things that disrupt normal function. Prescription drugs disrupt normal cell function. When cell function is normalized, you cannot be sick. This is what the orthomolecular approach is all about. It's using vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, and natural remedies to rebalance the body and make it well again. The obsolete approach of using toxic prescription drugs to suppress symptoms is guaranteed to make and keep people sick—yet pharmaceutical companies grow as sales go up every year. Go figure!

Raymond Francis is an M.I.T.-trained scientist and an internationally recognized leader in the emerging field of optimal health maintenance.

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From Mike White

DRUGS, DRUGS, DRUGS

From the Wall Street Journal June 22 2001. in italics

"In 1999,the Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported more then 600,000 hospital admissions and 700,000 emergency-room visits resulting from medications that were correctly administered but nonetheless produced side effects - from intestinal bleeding to seizures to even death."  

Adverse reactions? Because the elderly take the most drugs, they are at the greatest risk. on  average, Americans who are 65 or older take six medications, including prescription and over-the-counter drugs, according to a number of studies. For residents of nursing homes and other long term care facilities, that average rises to eight. One man showed up to a Hebrew home who was taking 42.  

I have worked with several manic depressives, asthmatics, emphysema and COPD victims. They receive reflexive breathing training, breathing coordination, Optimal Breath Releases (OBR’s) and Strapping Techniques and  over weeks and months many have slowly backed off  their medications, felt their feelings, stopped gasping  and became calm, energized  and optimistic.  Too often the psychiatrist or medical doctor has turned a deaf ear to the patients' concerns about drug side effects. "Learn to live with it" is what the patient most often hears.

I’ve heard that the drug industry has a lock on most of psychiatry.  The overzealous usage of emergency pharmaceuticals that help so many in times of severe challenge has eroded the options of  living without them and their negative side effects.  Two recent published "possible" side effects in the Pill Book stemming from anti depression medicine were "labored breathing" and "shortness of   breath". The client had both.   

THIS is REALLY unfair.  The person also had no breathing pauses meaning this person’s "motor" never stops its high revolutions.  Even while appearing to be resting.  The breaths per minute and pause length should be a clue but no one cares to spend a few minutes to observe this natural feedback information source.  Get the Pill Book by Bantam books and see if your breathing issues might be listed in the side effects of your prescription medicine. 

The medical world needs to learn about healthy breathing.  Use the drugs, but learn to breathe better in conjunction with therapy and watch the need for the drugs reduce and often disappear.

Deaths in England Due to Medical Errors up 500%

By Sarah Lyall

About 1,200 people died in public hospitals in Britain last year because of mistakes in prescribing and administering medicine, according to a report published by a government watchdog group.

Outlined in a report by the Audit Commission, the errors included administering the wrong medicine - in one case, a breast cancer patient was given the sleeping drug Temazepam instead of the cancer drug Tamoxifen - to giving out the wrong dosage of the right drug, to unknowingly prescribing a drug that caused a fatal reaction.

The death toll was five times higher than that in 1990, according to the report.

In addition, the thousands of patients who survive medicine-related mistakes each year invariably become sicker, requiring more treatment that create an extra expense for the National Health Service, the report said.

"The health service is probably spending $725 million a year making better people who experienced an adverse incident or errors, and that does not include the human cost to patients," said Nick Mapstone, an author of the report.

"The number of drugs is increasing, the effectiveness - and therefore often the toxicity - of drugs is increasing, the number of people on multiple medications is increasing, and that increases the risk of interaction," Dr. Pickersgill told the BBC.

"We must also remember that one in six pharmacy posts in hospitals are unfilled, and new doctors who are doing the work on the wards are overworked as well," he said.

A number of highly publicized cases of drug-related error in recent months has brought home the problem. In one case, a cancer patient was prescribed and administered a drug at 1,000 times the recommended dose, according to the report.

In another case, at Queen's Medical Center in Nottingham, a teenager, who was a cancer patient in remission, fell into a coma and died after an anticancer drug was mistakenly injected into his spine.

"The recent events at Queen's Medical Center illustrate how day-to-day pressures can lead to acknowledged best practice being ignored," the report said.

Jackie Glatter, a spokeswoman for the Consumers' Association, which lobbies for patients' rights, said: "The report shows there is a strong need for detailed and clear patient information about treatments and medicines - not just in hospitals, but also when people are taking medicine at home."

New York Times December 20, 2001 

Recommended program

Rezulin: Given fast-track approval by the FDA, Rezulin was linked to sixty-three confirmed deaths and probably hundreds more. "We have real trouble," an FDA physician wrote in 1997, just a few months after Rezulin's approval (103). The drug wasn't withdrawn until 2000.

Lotronex: Against concerns of one of its own officers, the FDA approved Lotronex in February 2000. By the time it was withdrawn nine months later, the FDA had received reports of ninety-three hospitalizations, multiple emergency bowel surgeries, and five deaths (104).

Propulsid: A top-selling drug many years, the drug was linked to hundreds of cases of heart arrhythmias and one hundred deaths.

Redux: Taken by millions for weight loss after its approval in April 1996, Redux was soon linked to heart valve damage and a disabling, often lethal pulmonary disorder. Withdrawn in September 1997.

Pondimin: A component of Fen-Phen, the diet fad drug. Approved in 1973, Pondimin's link to heart valve damage an a lethal pulmonary disorder wasn't recognized until shortly before its withdrawal in 1997.

Duract: The painkiller was withdrawn when it was linked to severe, sometimes fatal liver failure.

Seldane: America's and the world's top-selling antihistamine for a decade, it took the FDA five years to recognize that Seldane was causing cardiac arrhythmias, blackouts, hospitalizations, and deaths -- and another eight years to withdraw it.

Hismanal: Approved in 1988 and soon known to cause cardiac arrhythmias, the drug was finally withdrawn in 1999.

Posicor: For treating hypertension, the drug was linked to life-threatening drug interactions and more than one hundred deaths. An expert on the advisory committee said, "Posicor should not have been approved (105)."

Raxar: Linked to cardiac toxicities and deaths.

Baycol - Google it

Viox  Google it

Propulsid  Google it

Palladone Google it

References for above ten medications

FDA Proposes New User-Friendly Prescription-Drug Labeling

ROCKVILLE, Md.-The FDA says it is taking the confusion out of physician drug-package inserts.

  The package inserts will have critical information printed up front with bullet points, in an easy-to-read format. The design is a direct response to the National Academy of Sciences’ assertion that medical errors may be responsible for 100,000 deaths per year and its recommendation that new package standards will “maximize safety.”

  The package insert is the critical link in the communication chain between drugmakers and health-care providers. Calling the proposed change “particularly valuable,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Jane E. Henney says it “will make important information available in a clear, consistent, and readable format that is essential to proper prescribing practices.”

  The proposed new format should help practitioners quickly find the most important information about a product, thereby decreasing preventable medical errors and improving treatment effectiveness.-Nancy Sharp

Women at Greater Risk of Drug Reactions
Taking more than one medication at a time is always a risky business, since it increases the likelihood of an adverse drug reaction (ADR) - a harmful, unintended, or unwanted effect of a medication. In the United States, ADRs are a leading cause of illness and account for as many as 106,000 deaths annually.

According to the results of a number of recent studies, it's even more of a danger for women, in part because they are more likely to use multiple medications and dietary supplements. Sex -- based differences in metabolism, anatomy, and hormone levels also seem to play a role in why women experience more unwanted effects of drugs.

"Recent findings suggest women are significantly more likely to suffer from adverse drug interactions because of their biology and likelihood of taking more than one medication," said Phyllis Greenberger, president and CEO of the Society for Women's Health Research. "Women should think twice before combining even commonplace products like ibuprofen, St. John's Wort and oral contraceptives with other drugs."

A recent review of 48 studies in the United Kingdom revealed that adverse drug reactions to newly marketed drugs are 60% more common in women than in men. This sex difference was observed across all age groups older than 19 years old. Other studies have found less pronounced, yet significantly higher risks of ADRs among women.

Women need not look further than their own medicine cabinet for potentially problematic combinations, experts warn. For instance, oral contraceptives can fail resulting in pregnancy when taken in combination with the antibiotics rifampin, tetracycline or penicillin.

Some antacids can inactivate fluoroquinolones, drugs often prescribed for urinary tract infections, allowing infections to progress unchecked. In addition, combining selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) with other types of antidepressants or pain medications can have serious consequences.

Their greater use of multiple drugs is not the only reason women are at an elevated risk of adverse drug reactions. Research points to a number of other possible mechanisms for this sex-based difference. Variations between men and women in liver and kidney functioning, which affects drug metabolism, as well as anatomy seem to influence the incidence of adverse drug reactions.

On average, women have a lower body weight, smaller organ size, reduced blood flow and a higher proportion of fat compared with men. Overall differences in hormonal activity between, the sexes affect the way drugs are processed, absorbed and cleared by the body as well. Because of these sex-differences, the optimally safe and effective dose of a drug varies between men and women. Research suggests that a significant percentage of adverse drug events among women may be due to unnecessarily high doses of frequently prescribed drugs.

What's more, women should refer to a drug reference book like The Pill Book, if possible, according to Maryann Napoli, associate director of the Center for Medical Consumers in New York City. Almost all local libraries have a drug reference book in their collection and there are also some reliable sources of drug information on the Internet. Napoli suggests women get in the habit of reading up on every prescription or over-the-counter drug before they start using it.

From Dr. Joe Mercola: "One of the major players at Reuters, the world’s primary source of news information, is also a chairman of drug giant GlaxoSmithKline. It doesn’t take much intelligence to understand that the news service is heavily prejudiced in favor of the drug company. Fortunately, we are leveling the playing field and are getting out the truth about health care and drugs."

Drug-related morbidity and mortality have been estimated to cost more that $136 billion a year in United States. These estimates are higher than the total cost of cardiovascular care or diabetes care in the United States. A major component of these costs is adverse drug reactions (ADE). Older people use more prescription drugs.

Read Examining Your Doctor: A patient's guide in avoiding harmful medical care.  Dr. Timothy McCall

PODCAST
In this fascinating interview, licensed pharmacist Suzy Cohen reveals the dangers of pharmaceuticals and why people should get off prescription drugs whenever possible. (This is from a pharmacist!) Her site is www.DearPharmacist.com
The pod cast

MORE
An Unprecedented Demographic Shift The American population is getting older. Each day in this country about 6,000 people turn 65. By 2020, there will be 50 million older Americans and as many as 70 million by 2030. In less than 20 years there will be as many people over 65 as children under 18 in our population. What are the health care implications of this seismic shift in demographics? To put the aging population in a health care perspective consider that older Americans currently account for 36% of hospital stays, 49% of all days of hospital care, and 50% of all physician hours.

The number of physicians with formal training in caring for the elderly are inadequate to care even for today’s older population let alone to care for the coming wave of older Americans. Today we have only about 9,000 geriatricians (by comparison, there are currently about 34,000 pediatricians!) and that number is expected to drop to 6,000 or so by 2004 as some retire and others leave because of lower Medicare reimbursements. What to do?

A pharmaceutical salesman I spoke with justifies giving drugs to people because they will not take responsibility for taking charge of there own self healing. That patient compliance is hard to come by (which is partly true but that is no reason to poison them with drug side effects). To me that is a major misunderstanding of the facts. Many would do what was asked of them if there were more examples of successes but the entire issue is cloaked in medical bafflegab and so called "legitimate" clinical studies.

The truth is that most non drug methods are invalidated by physicians as being useless or dangerous with the standard "where is the double blind study?"  These "harbingers of objectivity" may well know that no natural nutritionals have the money to pay for million dollar studies.  Some physicians know the truth and tell it albeit quietly but at risk for censure within their own medical community. How sad for them.