Filed under: Medications, Research | Tags: cholesterol, JUPITER, side effects, statin
It may seem like I’m picking on statin (cholesterol) drugs, but they’re such an easy target for scorn. They’re such a good example of how bad science and greed walk hand in hand in our current medical system.
Example 1:
You may have read reports of the push to prescribe statins to younger, healthy people. The rationale for this is that the sooner you stop heart disease the better. The research support for this was the JUPITER study, funded by a drug company, which claimed a 44% reduced risk of a cardiovascular event for those using a statin.
One obvious problem with the study is that it was conducted on sick people, not healthy ones. There has been no study on the consequences of giving statins over prolonged periods to healthy people.
In other words, the “scientific” medical community’s attitude is: Hey, don’t let the lack of scientific evidence stop the prescriptions. Let’s proceed on assumptions.
Example 2:
You’d think from the advertising and 20 million prescriptions that statins are miracle drugs. The scientific truth is something completely different. The British Medical Journal in 2010 published yet another study showing how poorly these drugs perform. They found, in following over 225,000 people, that only 2.7% benefited (271 out of 10,000). Not what you call cost-effective.
Even more damning in the BMJ study was the number of people suffering side effects, including liver damage, kidney failure, cataracts, and extreme muscle fatigue. This group made up 4.4% of participants. In other words, almost twice as many people did worse on statins than did better.
Mathematics is a science: 4.4% of 20 million is 880,000 people suffering, even dying in the hopes that 2.7%, 540,000, will have less heart disease. Clearly doctors who prescribe statins are not doing their math.
Filed under: News | Tags: blood pressure, drug deaths, drugs, pain, pills, prescriptions, side effects
By Tom Ballard, RN, ND
The Seattle PI published a nice article on pain pills (Prescription Pill Deaths Soar, PI 11-14-08). However, prescription drugs problems go far beyond pain medications.
The Journal of the American Medical Association and other leading publications report at least 120,000 deaths per year from ‘appropriately prescribed’ medications. It makes since: Prescription drugs are largely used to treat symptoms not diseases. For instance: High blood pressure may be caused by a magnesium deficiency. Blood pressure pills lower your blood pressure, but ignore the magnesium deficiency that places you at risk of stroke and heart attack.
Rising death rates from prescription drugs are a major health problem, killing three times as many as breast cancer, yet the public is largely unaware of this health crisis.
Filed under: Commentary, Medications | Tags: adverse reactions, elderly, prescription drugs, side effects
The elderly aren’t the only ones being prescribed pharmaceuticals, but they’re more likely to be taking several. Along with children, the elderly are most likely to have adverse reactions to medicines. This is mostly due to their lessened ability to detoxify and remove chemicals from the body.
From: Worstpills.com (Public Citizen)
Each year, more than 9.6 million adverse drug reactions occur in older Americans. The referenced study found that 37% of these adverse reactions were not reported to the doctor, presumably because patients did not realize the reactions were due to the drug. This is not too surprising considering that most doctors admitted they did not explain possible adverse effects to their patients.
The following national estimates are based on well-conducted studies, mainly in the United States: