How Pharmaceuticals Came To Be The 4th Leading Cause Of Death In America
Collective Evolution
November 20, 2013
by Lisa Bloomquist
Prescription drugs are the 4th leading cause of death in America. (1) People know this to be true, they know it to be appalling, but it’s still seen as incomprehensible and absurd. How could medicine hurt so many people? We all know that side-effects happen, but they are thought to be rare. They must be rare, right?
We all know some good, kind, generous, thoughtful doctors who want nothing more for their patients than health and happiness, so they certainly aren’t giving their patients drugs that hurt them, are they? We know that the FDA is a federal bureaucracy, so it must be too restrictive of the pharmaceutical industry, right? And the FDA is supposed to protect consumers, so we’re as safe as we can be, right? And people can sue, so the legal system must be keeping the bad aspects of the medical system in check, right?
All of these questions, and many more, bring up some cognitive dissonance for people when they’re faced with the fact that prescription drugs, used as prescribed, kill an inordinate a number of people. It brings up the questions - How do prescription drugs get to be the 4th leading cause of death in America? How does that happen?
Here is a tale of how prescription drugs, used as prescribed, kill people.
MORE
- See also: Harvard University - The Lab @ Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics -- Risky Drugs: Why The FDA Cannot Be Trusted
= new reply since forum marked as read
- If it can prevent bacterial DNA from unwinding and duplicating, it has the potential to do this to any DNA. And Fluorine is poison. In all its forms. Period.
[center]''Let food be thy medicine, and let thy medicine be food.'' ~Hippocrates[/center]
Cranberry Juice Prevents Urinary Tract Infection
- But I've already used up my luck being previously saved in 2009 from that shit. Twice. You can keep it.
...is not insuring affordable medical access, nor creating more medical innovation, nor free-market pharmaceutical invention, but rather the degradation of the environment, the food, the water and the air that we breathe.
Since World War II over 90,000 chemicals compounds issuing forth from chemical companies, car/toy/plastic-crap manufacturers, agricultural/fertilizer/pesticide companies and all those ''silver-bullet'' drugs we've come to expect from pharmaceutical companies have been approved for use by the various governmental regulatory agencies, few of which were ever tested for their impact upon human health.
They've ejected pollutants and their by-products into the air and into the water. And we ourselves become a major source of chemical pollution as we excrete the prescription drugs everyone takes back into the environment causing hermaphrodite fish among other environmental tragedies.
Endocrine-disruptors (BPA, covers all the plastic in the milk cartons in the fridge, or the white lining in that can of tomato sauce you just poured, or that plastic bowl you just nuked some BPA into the food you warmed up in the microwave oven) are a known particular threat, but its become so ubiquitous existing in and/or on almost everything we use. Thus making it impossible to remove from the public sphere without major upheaval and demand and huge cost to the profit line. Something TPTB wish to avoid at all costs.
- That's what's making us all sick. We keep trying to treat the symptoms of the problem and avoiding the problem itself.
Because we're afraid to confront those who are creating it.
- The Right-to-Lifers should be picketing the chemical companies. They kill more children than anyone on the planet.....
http://vimeo.com/34176018
- Is an ancient saying, and it's still true. You cannot have a corrupt medical system without first having a corrupt country in which to run it.
- Maybe with the right equipment......
...I'd say that any commercialization of healthcare is immoral.
- Profiting from the pain and misery of anyone is just plain fucking sick.
The ideas and solutions presented in this book will not be discussed in the Major US Media because their advertisers would not be pleased.
Pharmageddon by David Healy Amazon rating: 4.9/5.0
These developments have tied the survival of pharmaceutical companies to the development of blockbuster drugs, so that they must overhype benefits and deny real hazards. Healy further explains why these trends have basically ended the possibility of universal health care in the United States and elsewhere around the world. He concludes with suggestions for reform of our currently corrupted evidence-based medical system.
"This meticulously documented book makes extraordinary claims with far-reaching intellectual and practical ramifications. It is the most powerful critique of the contemporary medical-industrial complex that I know."--Andrew T. Scull, author of Hysteria and Madness: A Very Short Introduction
"This book shines a bright light on the pharmaceutical industry (and American healthcare) in the same way that Silent Spring called out the chemical industry and Unsafe at Any Speed called out the automobile industry. Pharmageddon is Healy's most important book to date. It will make a real contribution toward healing our sick system of pharmaceutical-driven medicine and helping doctors provide better care for their patients."--Elizabeth Siegel Watkins, author of The Estrogen Elixir and On the Pill
Excellent expose
David Healy has written extensively about the pharmaceutical industry, and this book is one of his best. He gives a short history of how drugs became such big business, and why the incentives are wrong for new drug development. Healy is by no means anti-drug, but he objects to the use of too many drugs and of drugs that have questionable value to the patient. Everyone should be aware of the information in this book before filling their next prescription.
http://www.amazon.com/Pharmageddon-David-Healy/dp/0520275764/
The Revolving Door between the FDA and the industry must be closed.
HOW FDA, BIG PHARMA, AND DOCTORS CAUSE INJURY FOR PROFIT
Byron J. Richards, November 4, 2009
...FDA managers act in a revolving door capacity with the various industries they are supposed to be regulating. What FDA mangers actually do is more akin to the activities of a police-force bully. They seek to knock out competition for their friends in Big Pharma, Big Biotech, and Big Food, while acting as the gatekeepers of profits for the chosen few – often in disregard of the health consequences.
http://www.newswithviews.com/Richards/byron187.htm
The potential lies within everyone. Where ''we start'' is the only place where we can, with Unconditional LOVE. Unconditional LOVE is a default position in which we all respect and agree to the right of free will and existence of all others. This is what we've been here for all along. Taking ''life lessons.''
And we've brought the wide variety and the methods of these life lessons onto our selves. The global warming we now talk about is both a cyclical phenomenon on a planetary basis (all the planets in our solar system warm and cool and change), as well as an effect that we enhance through our ignorance forcing onto to a new tipping point. The result? Potential cataclysm -- and from such disasters often comes change. Dramatic change. Evolutionary change.
This evolution will be a slow or as rapid as we make it. Some of these young whippsnappers are taking matters into their own hands, starting communities based in self-sustainability and being in symbiosis with nature. Some have more ambitious plans to change the whole world.
As usual, we'll probably do something in the middle. But change is coming. Change is part of nature and you can't stop it is you wanted to. We've been raised in a system of deprivation and fear. Forcing us to live worrying about eating and having a roof over our heads, all while we live on a planet with more than enough for everyone.
- And so succumbing to our fears, we'd more often prefer the devil we know, to the scary one in the future......
- Before the Patriarchy gods took over.
computer glitch ya know
so then the cases no longer figured in to numbers
Having used statistics for the better part of my former career, I know they can be made to say what one wills. I don't know who among the sources noted in this article are the most correct, but I have absolutely no faith in any government stats. None. I'll cite them from time to time (as in this case) in order to make a point, but I do so only for the benefit of those who are still tethered to this form of lie. Because for many, it's the only way to get through at all.
- The Harvard piece is the source the article uses for that statement. If you're interested in such tomfoolery, have at it and send Donald W. Light a line.
...from even before the cradle to the grave. In fact future generations may view graveyards holding the remains of people from our time to be toxic waste disposal areas.
- Requiring special permits just to leave a nice floral arrangement of remembrance to someone who lived during ''The Great Poisoning''.
... taking Levaquin and it is was only her careful study on the web that convinced her to drop the stuff after two days.
I have personally taken Levaquin and Cipro without problems.
A few months after my wife's episode, a friend at work was back from recovering from the "flu". He really did not look good. I asked him what was up and he told me that he had the "flu" and his dr has prescribed Levaquin (of course this is idiiotic on its face, no antibiotic will help the flu).
I told him that a substantial number of people cannot take Levaquin without serious side effects. I asked him if he could correllate the way he was feeling now with the onset of taking the drug. At first he kind of looked at me like I was nuts (ok this happens a lot 
but then he seemed to realize I might be on to something.
He called his dr who told him to stop taking the Levaquin. Within a couple of days he was right as rain.
I do want to be clear here. I BLAME DOCTORS FOR THIS. This drug, in the PDA, is listed as an ANTIBIOTIC OF LAST RESORT. The potential side effects are LAID OUT CLEARLY AND FORCEFULLY. Doctors prescribe a lot of medication without seriously considering the side effects and when they occur (which in the doctor's mind they are not supposed to because they are "rare" doctors often dismiss the possibility the drug is the problem. Doctors need to get a clue about some antibiotics, statins and some anti-depressants/anti-psychotics. THESE DRUGS REQUIRE AN INFORMED patient!
...what we see is a larger picture wherein one part of the society we've allowed to evolve poisons the environment and everything in it for profits. The mining and energy interests dig up the poisons from below, and then begin the process of delivery of their products into our bodies with the help of engineers, chemists and scientists. Many of whom work in or graduated from public universities. With tax dollars. Great return on the 'ol investment, eh?
The manufacturers then get a shot by incorporating these poisons in, spraying them on or adding them to various products we will end up ingesting -- by lathering, laying and/or inhaling it into our bodies (and Rubber Duckies if you still chew on those). Once there, these chemicals run havoc in our bodies. Mimicking other chemicals and generally disrupting DNA function, causing cells to metastasize and our own immune system begin to attack what they were designed to protect.
We are poisoning ourselves with our progress. And you may thank science, greed and our own complacency for it. Without all of us working together and the scientists with their ''pure theory and objectivity'' which ends up allowing them to create weapons of mass destruction which threatens the whole planet. We'd have never made it this far. Because assholes.
- Only to peter-out it would seem......
...since they serve no useful purpose.
And that means any direction you're going in......
that you were open-minded, for so long...
- I might add.
[center]Johnny Cannabiseed
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Mother Nature spent at least 3 million years evolving hominids. And the last 300,000 evolving homo sapiens. And we've done it all in total symbiosity with our environment. That is why so many plants appear tailor-made for our physical needs and complaints, because we're tailor-made for each other.
We always easily see how a plant develops symbiotically with other animals in order to help it spread their species far and wide. Well, we're animals too. We're no different from a squirrel which plants excess acorns leaving them to germinate. Or a bird who shits out seeds all over the place from the berries its eaten. That's a 2-fer since that way the seed gets a fertilizer coating to boot!
- Since the plants are good for us, we're good for them too. We're using each other.
Then of course, there's Cannabis:
{on edit: I love Tim too!}
The forthcoming article in JLME also presents systematic, quantitative evidence that since the industry started making large contributions to the FDA for reviewing its drugs, as it makes large contributions to Congressmen who have promoted this substitution for publicly funded regulation, the FDA has sped up the review process with the result that drugs approved are significantly more likely to cause serious harm, hospitalizations, and deaths. New FDA policies are likely to increase the epidemic of harms. This will increase costs for insurers but increase revenues for providers.
This evidence indicates why we can no longer trust the FDA to carry out its historic mission to protect the public from harmful and ineffective drugs. Strong public demand that government “do something” about periodic drug disasters has played a central role in developing the FDA.2 Yet close, constant contact by companies with FDA staff and officials has contributed to vague, minimal criteria of what “safe” and “effective” mean. The FDA routinely approves scores of new minor variations each year, with minimal evidence about risks of harm. Then very effective mass marketing takes over, and the FDA devotes only a small percent of its budget to protect physicians or patients from receiving biased or untruthful information.3 4 The further corruption of medical knowledge through company-funded teams that craft the published literature to overstate benefits and understate harms, unmonitored by the FDA, leaves good physicians with corrupted knowledge.5 6 Patients are the innocent victims.
Although it now embraces the industry rhetoric about “breakthrough” and “life-saving” innovation, the FDA in effect serves as the re-generator of patent-protected high prices for minor drugs in each disease group, as their therapeutic equivalents lose patent protection. The billions spent on promoting them results in the Inverse Benefit Law: the more widely most drugs are marketed, the more diluted become their benefits but more widespread become their risks of harm.
The FDA also legitimates industry efforts to lower and widen criteria prescribing drugs, known by critics as “the selling of sickness.” Regulations conveniently prohibit the FDA from comparing the effectiveness of new drugs or from assessing their cost-effectiveness. Only the United States allows companies to charge what they like and raise prices annually on last year’s drugs, without regard to their added value.7
A New Era?
Now the FDA is going even further. The New England Journal of Medicine has published, without comment, proposals by two senior figures from the FDA to loosen criteria drugs that allege to prevent Alzheimer’s disease by treating it at an early stage.8 The authors seem unaware of how their views about Alzheimer’s and the role of the FDA incorporate the language and rationale of marketing executives for the industry. First, they use the word “disease” to refer to a hypothetical “early-stage Alzheimer’s disease” that supposedly exists “before the earliest symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease are apparent.” Notice that phrasing assumes that the earliest symptoms will become apparent, when in fact it’s only a hypothetical model for claiming that cognitive lapses like not remembering where you put something or what you were going to say are signs of incipient Altzheimer’s disease. The proposed looser criteria would legitimate drugs as “safe and effective” that have little or no evidence of being effective and expose millions to risks of harmful side effects.
<snip>
Necrosis has set in and the stench has become so persuasive we no longer complain of the smell. ''It's just politics'' is the mantra. How business is done. It's how we all ended up here, of course. No one likes to talk about that part. But I'm afraid all affected limbs and organs must be excised to save the patient. If that isn't possible, we should take the parts that are still good and begin again.
- After we've burned the blueprints from this last debacle......
I'm not sure what you expected. The title of the article is: ''How Pharmaceuticals Came To Be The 4th Leading Cause Of Death In America.''
The author then uses a singular but horrendous example of a woman who was initially diagnosed with a Urinary Tract Infection (curable with cranberry juice) and who ended up dead. The chain of events from one deathly drug to the next -- showing how that happen was clearly laid out. How her health suffered in each step. And how instead of finding out what her health problems were and curing them, they killed her instead. I don't know why it's ''muddled'' for you. The article's author also cited several references and those authors did as well.
So I'm assuming you've exhausted a review of all of those resources provided and you still came up wanting. This wasn't a story about what killed her as much as it is a story about how she managed to survived these grim reapers for so long. Maybe the hope of the author in writing this article is that people will read it and not suffer the same fate. Won't stay ''with it'' long enough for them to kill them.
It's fairly clear to me her death resulted from side effects and possibly the drugs themselves. And having once been in her shoes, I have no doubts whatsoever on how this happens. Also bearing in mind that our corrupt system doesn't allow for the vampires of the medical system and who suck our blood daily, to be exposed except for the most egregious of their crimes.
- There's just too much money on the table.....
for all your anti-vaccine, anti-fluoridation, 9/11 Truth, Boston bombing truth, medical woo, conspiracy theory needs. 
Sources matter.
Sid
...I can't say I'm surprised.
- Selective rationality seems to be your strong suit.....
''The materialist fundamentalists are funnier than the Christian fundamentalists, because they think they're rational!'' ~Robert Anton Wilson
Sid
...and routinely denigrate it all as woo, in hopes people will be dissuaded from using their own intelligence to evaluate it.
A deviously clever way to distract attention from the plenteous & persistently pernicious problems of poo* they are pimping.
* unadulterated soul-dead scientific materialism
- Thanks, I love it!!!!
[center]
[/center]
Neurosurgeon Voices Health Concerns Over Geoengineering and Chemtrails
“Chemtrails Are Happening All Over The World” According to Former British Columbia Premier
Geoengineering & Chemtrails: What In The World Are They Spraying? And Why?
The Recent Increase In Chemtrails
The truth is out there!!
Sid
Sid
...that it appears to expect that the same sources who now control the current allopathic system to now verify the efficacy of the treatments in a field in which they have a vested interest in their failure. And with us living in a pit of corruption (in case you hadn't noticed), that's probably important in keeping things the way they are and to slime the alternatives as heavily and as often as possible.
- So if it seems I'm casting aspersions upon the so-called reputation of medical science, then you may consider them aspersed.
{on edit}: BTW, maybe you could also check into these guys at the FDA. They don't seem too big on ''efficacy.''
FDA lets drugs approved on fraudulent research stay on market
Allopathic is apparently a more widely accepted term and not just a "pejorative" but your entitled to your opinion, of course.
Some allopathic works, some doesn't.
It has its place, just as alternative medicine does.
Good luck with that.
It is far from perfect and it depends on past knowledge. I was educated as a researcher in my very earlier life (MA in research methodology, measurement, and evaluation from NYU), and so I have an inside view of the scientific method.
Anyone that believes the results of a study without checking into the methodology should rethink.
Agreed. As long as the same one's with everything to lose by that proof, aren't the ones doing the verifications, I have no problem with it. For example, i'd expect that all testing be done according to scientific protocols like tests for over a two year period at minimum. Testing differences between sexes. Etc.
- You know, all the regular stuff that all the big boys are supposed to follow.
References
1. Lexchin J. New drugs and safety: what happened to new active substances approved in Canada between 1995 and 2010? Archives of Internal Medicine 2012 (Nov 26);172:1680-81.
2. Hilts PJ. Protecting America's Health: The FDA, Business and One Hundred Years of Regulation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf; 2003.
3. Rodwin M. Conflicts of interest, institutional corruption, and Pharma: an agenda for reform. Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 2012;40:511-22.
4. Rodwin M. Reforming pharmaceutical industry-physician financial relationships: lessons from the United States, France, and Japan. Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 2011(Winter):2-10.
5. Sismondo S. Ghost management. PLoS Medicine 2007;4:1429-33.
6. Sismondo S, Doucet M. Publication ethics and the ghost management of medical publication. Bioethics 2010;24:273-83.
7. Schondelmeyer S, Purvis L. Rx Price Watch Report. Washington DC: American Association of Retired Persons 2012.
8. Kozauer N, Katz R. Regulatory innovation and drug development for early-stage Alzheimer's disease. New England Journal of Medicine 2013 (Mar 13);DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1302513
9. Young JH. The Toadstool Millionaires: a social history of patent medicines in America before federal regulation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; 1961.
10. Schiff G, Galanter W, Duhig J, et al. Principles of conservative prescribing. Archives of Internal Medicine 2011;171:1433-30.
- If you're gonna sling shit for a living you should make sure you know WTF you're doing.
Possibly The Most Fascinating UFO Footage Ever Captured On Camera
The Shocking Truth About Alien Abductions (Powerful Video Evidence)
The Biggest Secret: Do Reptilian-Human Hybrids Run Our World?
and my particular favourite:
Wikileaks Cables Confirm Existence of Extraterrestrial Life
Awesome sourcing.
Sid
It's the article that the CE piece is based upon. You know, talking about ethics. And how the stuff just seems to be so much in absence these days......
- Have a nice day! Ya hear?
...where I said I couldn't give a rat's ass over government stats. Inasmuch as I used to collect, prepare and publish them, I know from whence they cometh and whither they goeth.
But once again I refuse to do other's homework. If you wish to know: SEEK. And ye shall find. Or just believe what you want and find some stats to fit it. That's what most people do anyway.
- Here's the link to the author's essay. His email address is there too. Good luck and let us know how things turned out, okay?
http://www.ethics.harvard.edu/lab/blog/312-risky-drugs
Well, according to Sid!
Sid
Take Back Your Power – How to Mitigate the Harmful Effects of Smart Meters
Seriously. If the website you're linking to is anti-vaccine, anti-fluoridation, antibiotics cause autism, chemtrails are real, aliens are among us, 9/11 truther, Boston bombing truther, Sandy Hook truther, global warming denialist, NWO, Illuminati nutbars, it's time to find a new source.
Nice job.
Sid
I guess I should have just eaten some leaves and applied a poultice - that would have cured my cancer.
- It always makes me a little dizzy when I hear the voice of reason.
...an emergent health situation is paramount. That is what one must deal with. I'm not familiar with Armour Thyroid, but it makes little point to attempt to achieve good health when you're dying of some disease. That is the priority.
It mostly becomes an issue when you're dying from the medicine designed to keep you alive (as in my case with Prednisone, among others, killing me from the inside). And in point of fact, much of the reason why foods today don't suffice in supporting health and nutritional needs sufficiently, is because the food itself is the problem.
Farming methods have not only added death and misery via the pesticides and GMOs, but we've depleted the soils through constant use, never allowing them time to recover the trace minerals we need as we used to.
- The result is foods that look just beautiful to the eye, tastes mostly bland and unappealing and which are minimally nutritional.
...if and when the situation is emergent. Saving the life is paramount. But as I've noted earlier, we keep treating symptoms. Why won't anyone agree what the true problem is: The stroke itself. Why not deal with that?
- Because when you boil it down, it all comes down to MONEY. That's, why. They got it and intend to keep it. Even if it kills us.
You develop it from a poor diet and eating shit for food. Drinking sodas full of HFCS. Eating fast foods with all kinds of crud in it. And if one does develop diabetes, there are a myriad of other methods of treating it. The worst ones are pharmaceutical.
I'm sorry, but most people have no idea about anything about having to do with living a nutritionally healthy lifestyle, because our food supply has been adulterated for so long that it's impossible to remain healthy eating what's on offer at most grocery stores today.
I've taken diabetes medication (Metformin) when the Prednisone I was also taking induced a diabetic condition in me as negative effect of taking the drug. Which in-turn created even more health problems, the worst of which I'm dealing with now: Peripheral Neuropathy.
- On a side note: you should see all the patents being filed for synthetic forms of CBD, CBN, THC and other cannabinoids they're discovering as we speak -- from cannabis, of course.
An accident, a broken leg, an emergency surgery: that's when the allos can shine. But they know nothing about health. They learned most of what they now know, by stealing the accumulated knowledge going centuries back, and which came from natural and what is now termed ''alternative medicine.'' And then the good 'ol AMA set about destroying it once big money became its principle aim.
- Drug dealers. Drug dealers who work for pharmaceutical companies are primarily what doctors are now. Sad, really. They could have done so much good for the world and they turned their chance into shit. Of course, they've had a lot of help.
- I only tutor and convo with the educable now. Mind-open people. You know. I'm too old and too tired for anything more strenuous.
is well established, and is definitely not a conspiracy theory.
Drugs are recalled very frequently, and sometimes it is due to being connected with human deaths.
- It ain't easy being awake before everyone else, is it?
Sid
professors would laugh at you. It's a woo site.
How am I supposed to take your post seriously when you cite from a website that has these "news" stories:
“Chemtrails Are Happening All Over The World” According to Former British Columbia Premier
The Recent Increase In Chemtrails
Courts Rule MMR & Thimerosal Containing Vaccines Caused Autism & Brain Damage
Aliens Have Been Working With Governments For Decades
The Shocking Truth About Alien Abductions (Powerful Video Evidence)
And I don't care if you do.
- I think that solves all the problems as far as I can see.
How does one: ''post as if it's truth?''
I posted an article I find interesting and to which I generally agree. I don't care if you don't like the article. You're free to do so. As am I. If you dislike the article so much might I suggest you let he author know your feelings instead of wasting them on me.
- I'm not here please you. Capice?
I asked you to read my posts up above.
Hey, I am just as educated as you are, and probably even more so.
You haven't written anything that would defend anything you have been posting as far as attacking me.
So?
Nope you are wrong. But thanks that you can't be bothered to read my posts. Hey, I think you know I am right!
Each of your responses just supports how right I am about the game you're trying to play.
I am not playing games - you are playing games.
Excuse me, but you have said some pretty derogatory things to me. How do you explain that?
I will talk to you tomorrow.
it also explains why you think Sid is such a hero
Bye...
America be reason to implement guidelines that could possibly adversely impact industry profitability for: the bidness of America is bidness and biddesses are in bidness to make money. 
And I'm already in the hospital recovering from major surgery at the time.
These people who make this shit and dispense it and know what it does, are sick.
- Really sick.
