MEDICAL ERRORS, THE FDA, AND PROBLEMS WITH PRESCRIPTION DRUGS

[TruthBrigade]

MEDICAL ERRORS, THE FDA, AND PROBLEMS WITH PRESCRIPTION DRUGS

http://www.cancure.org/medical_errors.htm

This web page is being developed at the request of several people who have been researching problems with the drug industry and conventional medical doctors. If you find other articles that relate to this topic that you think we should add to this web page, be sure to email the webmaster.

Medical Errors - A Leading Cause of Death
The JOURNAL of the AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION (JAMA) Vol 284, No 4, July 26th 2000 article written by Dr Barbara Starfield, MD, MPH, of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, shows that medical errors may be the third leading cause of death in the United States.

The report apparently shows there are 2,000 deaths/year from unnecessary surgery; 7000 deaths/year from medication errors in hospitals; 20,000 deaths/year from other errors in hospitals; 80,000 deaths/year from infections in hospitals; 106,000 deaths/year from non-error, adverse effects of medications - these total up to 225,000 deaths per year in the US from iatrogenic causes which ranks these deaths as the # 3 killer. Iatrogenic is a term used when a patient dies as a direct result of treatments by a physician, whether it is from misdiagnosis of the ailment or from adverse drug reactions used to treat the illness. (drug reactions are the most common cause).

The National Academies website published an article titled "Preventing Death and Injury From Medical Errors Requires Dramatic, System-Wide Changes." which you can read online at  http://www4.nationalacademies.org/news.nsf/isbn/0309068371?OpenDocument or the book "To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System" at http://www.nap.edu/books/0309068371/html/ - These show medical errors as a leading cause of death.

Based on the findings of one major study, medical errors kill some 44,000 people in U.S. hospitals each year. Another study puts the number much higher, at 98,000. Even using the lower estimate, more people die from medical mistakes each year than from highway accidents, breast cancer, or AIDS. And deaths from medication errors that take place both in and out of hospitals are aid to be more than 7,000 annually.

Prescription Drugs - Leading Killer in USA

According to information we have received, a statistical study of hospital deaths in the U.S. conducted at the University of Toronto revealed that pharmaceutical drugs kill more people every year than are killed in traffic accidents.

The study is said to show that more than two million American hospitalized patients suffered a serious adverse drug reaction (ADR) within the 12-month period of the study and, of these, over 100,000 died as a result. The researchers found that over 75 per cent of these ADRs were dose-dependent, which suggests they were due to the inherent toxicity of the drugs rather than to allergic reactions.

The data did not include fatal reactions caused by accidental overdoses or errors in administration of the drugs. If these had been included, it is estimated that another 100,000 deaths would be added to the total every year.

The researchers concluded that ADRs are now the fourth leading cause of death in the United States after heart disease, cancer, and stroke.

Source: Jason, et al. (Lazarou et al), Incidence of Adverse Drug Reactions in Hospitalized Patients, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Vol. 279. April 15, 1998, pp. 1200-05. Also Bates, David W., Drugs and Adverse Drug Reactions: How Worried Should We Be? JAMA, Vol. 279. April 15, 1998, pp. 1216-17.

One of the first JAMA article on medical errors appeared in JAMA 1994;272:1851-7. by Leape LL. Then in April 1998, JAMA 1998 Apr 15;279(15):1200-5 See http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?db=m&form=6&Dopt=r&uid=9555760

Related articles are at http://jama.ama-assn.org/issues/v280n20/related/jlt1125-1.html#searchmedline

Other related articles:
Schuster M, McGlynn E, Brook R. How good is the quality of health care in the United States? Milbank Q. 1998;76:517-563. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?db=m&form=6&Dopt=r&uid=9879302

World Health Report 2000. Available at: http://www.who.int/whr/2000/en/report.htm.

Starfield B. Evaluating the State Children's Health Insurance Program: critical considerations. Annu Rev Public Health. 2000;21:569-585. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?db=m&form=6&Dopt=r&uid=10884965

Leape L. Unnecessary surgery. Annu Rev Public Health. 1992;13:363-383. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?db=m&form=6&Dopt=r&uid=1599594

Phillips D, Christenfeld N, Glynn L. Increase in US medication-error deaths between 1983 and 1993. Lancet. 1998;351:643-644. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?db=m&form=6&Dopt=r&uid=9500322

Weingart SN, Wilson RM, Gibberd RW, Harrison B. Epidemiology and medical error. BMJ. 2000;320:774-777. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?db=m&form=6&Dopt=r&uid=10720365

Guyer B, Hoyert D, Martin J, Ventura S, MacDorman M, Strobino D. Annual summary of vital statistics 1998. Pediatrics. 1999;104:1229-1246. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?db=m&form=6&Dopt=r&uid=10585972

Harrold LR, Field TS, Gurwitz JH. Knowledge, patterns of care, and outcomes of care for generalists and specialists. J Gen Intern Med. 1999;14:499-511. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?db=m&form=6&Dopt=r&uid=10491236

Holland E, Degruy F. Drug-Induced Disorders - November 1, 1997 - American Family Physician "...more than 1 million patients are injured while in the hospital and approximately 180,000 die because of these injuries." http://www.aafp.org/afp/971101ap/holland.html

FDA advisers tied to industry


An article by Dennis Cauchon, the USA TODAY Newspaper

Sept. 25, 2000

According to a USA Today study, more than half of the experts hired to advise the government on the safety and effectiveness of medicine have financial relationships with the pharmaceutical companies that will be helped or hurt by their decisions. These experts are hired to advise the Food and Drug Administration on which medicines should be approved for sale, what the warning labels should say and how studies of drugs should be designed. The experts are supposed to be independent, but USA TODAY found that 54% of the time, they have a direct financial interest in the drug or topic they are asked to evaluate. These conflicts include helping a pharmaceutical company develop a medicine, then serving on an FDA advisory committee that judges the drug.

The conflicts typically include stock ownership, consulting fees or research grants.

Federal law generally prohibits the FDA from using experts with financial conflicts of interest, but according to the article, the FDA has waived the restriction more than 800 times since 1998.

These pharmaceutical experts, about 300 on 18 advisory committees, make decisions that affect the health of millions of Americans and billions of dollars in drugs sales. With few exceptions, the FDA follows the committees' advice.

The FDA reveals when financial conflicts exist, but it has kept details secret since 1992, so it is not possible to determine the amount of money or the drug company involved.

A USA Today analysis of financial conflicts at 159 FDA advisory committee meetings from Jan. 1, 1998, through last June 30 found:

     At 92% of the meetings, at least one member had a financial conflict of interest.

     At 55% of meetings, half or more of the FDA advisers had conflicts of interest.

     Conflicts were most frequent at the 57 meetings when broader issues were discussed: 92% of members had conflicts.

     At the 102 meetings dealing with the fate of a specific drug, 33% of the experts had a financial conflict.

"The best experts for the FDA are often the best experts to consult with industry," says FDA senior associate commissioner Linda Suydam, who is in charge of waiving conflict-of-interest restrictions. But Larry Sasich of Public Citizen, an advocacy group, says, "The industry has more influence on the process than people realize."

 FDA Conflict-of-Interest continued:

In the book Alternative Medicine Definitive Guide to Cancer, they discuss "How Cancer Politics Have Kept You In the Dark" - Chapter 26. They talk about one study that disclosed that almost 50% of high-ranking FDA officials had been employed by major drug companies immediately before joining the FDA and that half of these officials upon leaving the FDA take up executive jobs in pharmaceutical companies.

Another study that they discuss was printed in the Wall Street Journal in 1992. It revealed that 60% of drug advertisements in medical journals actually violated FDA guidelines, yet the FDA did nothing about those violations.

Yet, in 1985, the FDA teamed up with the Pharmaceutical Advertising Council to use drug industry funds to combat "quackery" in medicine - alternative medicine. 

Note: To get an understanding of why the FDA and other organizations are so opposed to "alternative medicine", be sure to read chapter 26 of the above named book - Alternative Medicine Definitive Guide to Cancer and other books, including the section of G. Edward Griffin's book World Without Cancer titled "The Politics of Cancer Therapy", or listen to the audio of the same name on our audio page.

System to Control Deadly Drug Interaction Failing

This article written by Andrea Knox for Knight Ridder Newspapers appeared on January 7, 2001 in "The Star," a Ventura County Newspaper.

In the article, it is reported that in the past four years, 10 prescription drugs and a vaccine have been taken off the market after killing and injuring thousands. According to the article, it is estimated that US drug fatalities runs 100,000 a year. There is no way of confirming the numbers because there is no reliable way to track and investigate problems with drugs. Doctors are not even required to report bad drug interactions.

It also doesn't help that the FDA has cut the time for routine drug approvals, making the real-life test for drugs coming after it has actually been approved. Without a proper monitoring system, it takes longer to discover what drugs could be causing problems.

Number of physicians in the U.S..........................................700,000
Accidental deaths caused by physicians per year................120,000

This information was sent to us indicating that it came from the Benton County News Tribune on the seventeenth of November, 1999

If you are aware of any other reports of medical errors, please email them to us at info@cancure.org  or fax them to (805) 498-4868.

[TruthBrigade]

Drug companies

http://www.healingdaily.com/conditions/pharmaceutical-companies.htm

46% of Americans take at least one prescription drug daily. (1)

Although drugs are sometimes appropriate and at times can save a person’s life, most of the time they are unnecessary, expensive and harmful. My advice would be to recognize that you should seek natural therapies which address the cause of the disease before choosing a drug-based solution.

I can assure you that the number of people who actually need drugs is a small percentage of those taking them. For example, people are being prescribed drugs for heartburn when it is one of the easiest health problems to treat. Most people ignore the fact that heartburn is an important clue from their body and rely on a drug instead to suppress the symptoms.

In case you haven't figured it out by now, the major reason for the traditional medical paradigm is the influence of the most powerful industry in the United States, the drug companies.

Drug companies exert a major influence on the majority of studies published and nearly all of medical education. This influence is what causes doctors to use their expensive symptomatic 'patch-up' drugs as solutions for people's problems.
   
drug companies

Drug companies have been able to get away with their high prices because the vast majority of people do not pay for their medications anymore. It's insurance companies that are picking up the tab. Since most people do not pay for it directly, drug companies are able to get away with charging outrageous prices.
Drug companies are the most profitable industry

The drug companies claim that they need large earnings - 125,835,595,000 in 1999 (2) - to conduct their research and development. They have a point - only up to a degree. Aggressive research is indeed needed. The medications produced by the pharmaceutical industry have improved the quality and length of life of many people. But this justification loses credibility when:

1. Just 1 out of every 5 dollars the drug industry collects goes to drug research.

2. Some drug companies spend almost twice as much money for advertising and marketing as they spend for research.

3. Drug industry profits are so large they outstrip every other industry's profits by far (3).

Drug companies are the most profitable industry. In 2001, a year which saw a drop in employment rates, a plunge in the stock market and symbols of America's economy literally come crashing down, the drug companies continued their reign as the most profitable industry in the annual Fortune 500 list.

While the overall profits of Fortune 500 companies declined by 53%, which was the 2nd biggest dive in profits the Fortune 500 has taken in its 47 years, the top 10 U.S. drug companies increased their profits by 33% (3).

Collectively, the 10 drug companies in the Fortune 500 topped all 3 of the Fortune magazine's measures of company profitability for 2001, according to the magazine's annual analysis of America's most important companies.

These drug companies had the greatest return on revenues, reporting a profit of 18.5 cents for every $1 of sales, which was 8 times higher than the median for all Fortune 500 industries, easily surpassing the next most profitable industry, which was commercial banking with a 13.5% return on revenue)(3).
   
drug companies

The system is badly broken and in need of a change. We cannot spend over one trillion dollars for health care just to improve profits for drug companies. We have the capital to more than adequately treat nearly all people. What we need to do is shift our perspectives and priorities.

This emphasis on drugs is one of the main reasons why spending for prescription drugs is the fastest-growing category of health care expenditures.

It is also one of the major factors contributing to the fact that doctors are a major leading cause of death in the United States, due to the fact that they have an over reliance on using drugs as 'patch-up' solutions, rather than seeking the cause of the problem.

 
How safe are prescription drugs?

In 1998 an extensive study published in the reputable Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) showed that 106,000 people die each year in American hospitals from medication side effects (4).

Let's look at this statistic a different way: 106,000 deaths a year averages out to nearly 300 deaths per day, every day. Deaths from all major airline crashes in the U.S. average less than 300 annually, but 1 airplane crash gets more media attention and governmental scrutiny than the 300 medication-related deaths which occurred not only on the same day as the airline crash, but also every day before and after for decades.

Why has this epidemic of side effects gone unrecognized? Deaths from medication reactions rarely look any different from natural deaths. There's no visible wreckage to videotape, no crash sites to fascinate and horrify TV viewers. As media people say, 'No film, no story'. Media and public relations firms, and how they shape the public's awereness, are discussed in more detail here.

Medication deaths often occur quietly in hospitals, emergency rooms and private homes. When medication-related deaths occur, it's often unclear at first whether the cause was the medication, the illness, or some other factor. In other words, to much of the media, there is nothing sexy about side effects.

The reported adverse effects of drugs are only the tip of the iceberg. Consider 'Digoxin', the best-selling heart drug. According to an article in JAMA, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) receives about 82 reports each year involving Digoxin, yet a systematic study of Medicare records reveals 202,211 hospitalizations for Digoxin adverse effects in a 7-year period (5). That's more than 28,000 reactions per year, 82 of which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) hears about.

Read about 10 prescription drugs withdrawn from the market since 1997, after being used by millions of people, on page 2 of this article.

Think you know for sure that the drug you are taking is absolutely safe? Think again. Many drugs spend years on the market before being taken off the market because of dangerous side-effects which surface. Aggressive marketing, slanting research, unethical publishing of results, influencing physicians, intimidating researchers, pressuring medical centers, manipulating the FDA, limiting information, marketing drugs with inaccurate safety information - all of these have created an environment in which drug development has become a race for the bottom line.

Knowing how the drug companies operate, it is no surprise when new dangers are revealed with drugs we've been using for decades and drugs are subsequently taken off the market.
Some of these withdrawn drugs, such as 'Redux', 'Seldane', 'Propulsid', 'Rezulin' , were prescribed MILLIONS OF TIMES. According to Dr. Alastair J.J. Wood, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Research at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center (1), a staggering 19.8 million patients (almost 10% of the United States population) were estimated to have been exposed to just 5 of the 10 drugs withdrawn in the past 10 years. (see below for the list)    
drug companies

Dr. Wood added, "None of the drugs was indicated for a life-threatening condition nor, in many cases, were they the only drugs available for that indication".(2) Safer alternatives to these drugs existed, but intense marketing convinced doctors to prescribe them anyway.

Drug companies can profit handsomely from such drugs. 'Seldane', the top-selling antihistamine in the world for more than a decade, was on the market for 13 years until the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) removed it in 1997, 7 years after the drug's cardiac toxicities were identified in 1990 (3).

Rezulin', a diabetes drug withdrawn by Britain in 1997, wasn't withdrawn by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) until 2000, during which time Warner-Lambert earned $1.8 billion (4).
10 prescription drugs withdrawn from the market since 1997

These drugs were taken off the market because of serious, often lethal side effects.

Rezulin: Given fast-track approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Rezulin was linked to 63 confirmed deaths and probably hundreds more. "We have real trouble," a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) physician wrote in 1997, just a few months after Rezulin's approval. The drug wasn't taken off the market until 2000.

Lotronex: Against concerns of one of its own officers, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Lotronex in February 2000. By the time it was withdrawn 9 months later, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had received reports of 93 hospitalizations, multiple emergency bowel surgeries, and 5 deaths.

Propulsid: A top-selling drug for many years, this drug was linked to hundreds of cases of heart arrhythmias and over 100 deaths.

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

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

Duract: This painkiller was taken off the market 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 Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 5 years to recognize that Seldane was causing cardiac arrhythmias, blackouts, hospitalizations, and deaths, and another 8 years to take it off the market.

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

Posicor: Used to treat hypertension, the drug was linked to life-threatening drug interactions and more than 100 deaths.

Raxar: Linked to cardiac toxicities and deaths.

 
Drug companies are a major influence on doctors’ prescribing habits

In addition to the 3 billion dollars they spend on direct marketing to consumers, drug companies are spending about 15 billion dollars per year on marketing to doctors.

Most physicians have no idea that the drug companies are spending on average $10,000 per doctor to influence their behavior. The doctors do not receive a check, of course, but the perks are significant.

Doctors also don't realize that they actually lose that much income and more if they factor in the time that they lose by sitting with the drug company representatives and going to their 'free' lectures and meals. Doctors also often overlook what a fiduciary responsibility is, and therefore don’t realize that they need to analyze carefully the costs involved in recommending expensive prescription drugs.

Doctors cause patients to divert much of their hard-earned income to the drug companies, which further perpetuates this indirect physician subsidy. All this results in prescription drugs being the fastest-growing category of health care expenditures in the United States.
Drug companies and the FDA
Did you know that experts with drug company affiliations fill many important advisory positions at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)? An investigation by 'USA Today' found that more than half of the experts on Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory committees have financial relationships with the drug companies which will be either hurt or helped by their decisions (5).    
drug companies

This goes on all the time, with researchers leaving universities, going to government agencies, and then leaving there for executive positions in business where they cash in on all the contacts they’ve made during the earlier years. It isn’t even considered unethical.
Misleading ads from drug companies

While drug companies must submit direct-to-consumer advertisements to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the agency’s review of drug ads is often not completed until after the ad has been widely circulated. What does this mean for consumers? Advertised drugs are not necessarily safe, and drug advertisements should be looked at with discretion.

If the FDA finds a drug ad to be false or misleading, it will issue a regulatory letter to the manufacturer. In the late 1990s, the FDA issued more than 100 such letters per year, but as of November 2002, only 24 had been issued for the year. The decrease, thought to be the result of a new legal review of proposed regulatory letters, has raised concerns that potentially misleading drug advertisements may be gaining public exposure.

According to a Consumer Reports analysis of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulatory letters from 1997 to 2002, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) charged drug companies with a variety of violations including omitting or minimizing drug risks, exaggerating the effectiveness of a drug, promoting unapproved uses for a drug, making false claims that a drug is superior to another, promoting drugs which are still experimental, using inconsistent or incorrect labeling information, and giving misleading or false information to doctors.

Drug ads which received the most letters citing violations from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) since 1997 included:

Claritin (allergy drug, 11 letters)
Avapro (blood pressure drug, 7 letters)
Flonase (allergy drug, 7 letters)
Flovent (asthma drug, 7 letters)
Celebrex (arthritis drug, 6 letters)
Vanceril (asthma drug, 6 letters)
Xenical (weight-loss drug, 6 letters)
Zyrtec (allergy drug, 6 letters)
Allegra (allergy drug, 5 letters)
Avandia (diabetes drug, 5 letters)
Ditropan (bladder problems drug, 5 letters)
Pravachol (cholesterol drug, 5 letters)

Source: Consumer Reports February 2003 68:(2)33-37

[TruthBrigade]

Statistics prove prescription drugs are 16,400% more deadly than terrorists

Tuesday, July 05, 2005 by: Jessica Fraser, citizen journalist
http://www.naturalnews.com/009278.html

America was rudely awakened to a new kind of danger on September 11, 2001: Terrorism. The attacks that day left 2,996 people dead, including the passengers on the four commercial airliners that were used as weapons. Many feel it was the most tragic day in U.S. history.

Four commercial jets crashed that day. But what if six jumbo jets crashed every day in the United States, claiming the lives of 783,936 people every year? That would certainly qualify as a massive tragedy, wouldn't it?

Well, forget "what if." The tragedy is happening right now. Over 750,000 people actually do die in the United States every year, although not from plane crashes. They die from something far more common and rarely perceived by the public as dangerous: modern medicine.

According to the groundbreaking 2003 medical report Death by Medicine, by Drs. Gary Null, Carolyn Dean, Martin Feldman, Debora Rasio and Dorothy Smith, 783,936 people in the United States die every year from conventional medicine mistakes. That's the equivalent of six jumbo jet crashes a day for an entire year. But where is the media attention for this tragedy? Where is the government support for stopping these medical mistakes before they happen?

After 9/11, the White House gave rise to the Department of Homeland Security, designed to prevent terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Since its inception, billions of dollars have been poured into it. The 2006 budget allots $34.2 billion to the DHS, a number that has come down slightly from the $37.7 billion budget of 2003.

According to the study led by Null, which involved a painstaking review of thousands of medical records, the United States spends $282 billion annually on deaths due to medical mistakes, or iatrogenic deaths. And that's a conservative estimate; only a fraction of medical errors are reported, according to the study. Actual medical mistakes are likely to be 20 times higher than the reported number because doctors fear retaliation for those mistakes. The American public heads to the doctor's office or the hospital time and again, oblivious of the alarming danger they're heading into. The public knows that medical errors occur, but they assume that errors are unusual, isolated events. Unfortunately, by accepting conventional medicine, patients voluntarily continue to walk into the leading cause of death in America.

According to a 1995 U.S. iatrogenic report, "Over a million patients are injured in U.S. hospitals each year, and approximately 280,000 die annually as a result of these injuries. Therefore, the iatrogenic death rate dwarfs the annual automobile accident mortality rate of 45,000 and accounts for more deaths than all other accidents combined." This report was issued 10 years ago, when America had 34 million fewer citizens and drug company scandals like the Vioxx recall were yet to occur. Today, health care comprises 15.5 percent of the United States' gross national product, with spending reaching $1.4 trillion in 2004.

Since Americans spend so much money on health care, they should be getting a high quality of care, right? Unfortunately, that's not the case. Of the 783,936 annual deaths due to conventional medical mistakes, about 106,000 are from prescription drugs, according to Death by Medicine. That also is a conservative number. Some experts estimate it should be more like 200,000 because of underreported cases of adverse drug reactions.

Americans today are used to fixing problems the quick way – even when it comes to their health. Thus, they rely heavily on prescription drugs to fix their diseases. For every conceivable ailment – real or not – chances are there's a pricey prescription drug to "treat" it. Chances are even better that their drug of choice comes chock full of side effects.

The problem is, prescription drugs don't treat diseases; they merely cover the symptoms. U.S. physicians provide allopathic health care – that is, they care for disease, not health. So, the over-prescription of drugs and medications is designed to treat disease instead of preventing it. And because there are so many drugs available, unforeseen adverse drug reactions are all too common, which leads to the highly conservative annual prescription drug death rate of 106,000. Keep in mind that these numbers came before the Vioxx scandal, and Cox-2 inhibitor drugs could ultimately end up killing tens of thousands more.

American medical patients are getting the short end of a rather raw deal when it comes to prescription drugs. Medicine is a high-dollar, highly competitive business. But it shouldn't be. Null's report cites the five most important aspects of health that modern medicine ignores in favor of the almighty dollar: Stress, lack of exercise, high calorie intake, highly processed foods and environmental toxin exposure. All these things are putting Americans in such poor health that they run to the doctor for treatment. But instead of doctors treating the causes of their poor health, such as putting them on a strict diet and exercise regimen, they stuff them full of prescription drugs to cover their symptoms. Using this inherently faulty system of medical treatment, it's no wonder so many Americans die from prescription drugs. They're not getting better; they're just popping drugs to make their symptoms temporarily go away.

But not all doctors subscribe to this method of "treatment." In fact, many doctors are just as angry as the public should be, charging that scientific medicine is "for sale" to the highest bidder – which, more often than not, end up being pharmaceutical companies. The pharmaceutical industry is a multi-trillion dollar business. Companies spend billions on advertising and promotions for prescription drugs. Who can remember the last time they watched television and weren't bombarded with ads for pills treating everything from erectile dysfunction to sleeplessness? And who has ever been to a doctor's office or hospital and not seen every pen, notepad and post-it bearing the logo of some prescription drug?

Medical experts claim that patients' requests for certain drugs have no effect on the number of prescriptions written for that drug. Pharmaceutical companies claim their drug ads are "educational" to the public. The public believes the FDA reviews all the ads and only allows the safest and most effective drug ads to reach the public. It's a clever system: Pharmaceutical companies influence the public to ask for prescription drugs, the public asks their physicians to prescribe them certain drugs, and doctors acquiesce to their patients' requests. Everyone's happy, right? Not quite, since the prescription drug death toll continues to rise.

The public seems to genuinely believe that drugs advertised on TV are safe, in spite of the plethora of side effects listed by the commercial's narrator, ranging from diarrhea to death. Patients feel justified in asking their physicians to prescribe them a particular drug they've seen on TV, since it surely must be safe or it wouldn't have been advertised. Remember all those TV ads heralding the wonders of Vioxx? One might wonder how many lives could have been spared if patients didn't see the ad on TV and request a prescription from their doctors.

But advertising isn't the only tool the pharmaceutical industry uses to influence medicine. Null's study cites an ABC report that said pharmaceutical companies spend over $2 billion sending doctors to more than 314,000 events every year. While doctors are riding the dollar of pharmaceutical companies, enjoying all the many perks of these "events," how likely are they to question the validity of drug companies or their products?

Admittedly, not all doctors reside in the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies. Some are downright angry at the situation, and angry on behalf of an unaware public. Major conflicts of interest exist between the American public, the medical community and the pharmaceutical industry. And although the public suffers the most from this conflict, it is the least informed. The public gets the short end of the stick and they don't even know it. That is why the pharmaceutical industry remains a multi-trillion dollar business.

Prescription drugs are only a part of the U.S. healthcare system's miserable failings. In fact, outpatient deaths, bedsore deaths and malnutrition deaths each account for higher death rates than adverse drug reactions. The problems run deep and cannot be remedied without drastic, widespread change in the system's money and ethics.

The first issue – money – is the main reason the medical industry cannot seem to change. Prescribing more drugs and recommending more surgeries means more profits. Getting more drugs approved by the FDA, regardless of their safety, means more money for the pharmaceutical industry. As the healthcare system stands today, physicians and drug companies can't seem to pass up earning loads of money, even if a few hundred thousand people lose their lives in the process. Even in drastic cases of deadly drugs, everyone involved has a scapegoat: Drug companies can blame the FDA for approving their product and the doctors for over-prescribing it, and doctors can blame the patients for wanting it and not properly weighing the risks.

What ultimately arises is a question of ethics. In layman's terms, ethics are the rules or moral guidelines that govern the conduct of people or professions. Some ethics are ingrained from childhood, but some are specifically set forth. For example, nearly all medical schools have their new doctors take a modern form of the Hippocratic Oath. While few versions are identical, none include setting aside proper medical care in favor of money-making practices.

On the research side of the issue, "Death by Medicine" cites an ABC report that says clinical trials funded by pharmaceutical companies show a 90 percent chance that a drug will be perceived as effective, whereas clinical trials not funded by drug companies show only a 50 percent chance that a drug will be perceived as effective. "It appears that money can’t buy you love, but it can buy you any 'scientific' result you want," writes Null and his team of researchers.

The government spends upwards of $30 billion a year on homeland security. Such spending seems important. Since 2001, 2,996 people in the United States have died from terrorism – all as a result of the 9/11 attacks. In that same period of time, 490,000 people have died from prescription drugs, not counting the Vioxx scandal. That means that prescription drugs in this country are at least 16,400 percent deadlier than terrorism. Again, those are the conservative numbers. A more realistic number, which would include deaths from over-the-counter drugs, makes drug consumption 32,000 percent deadlier than terrorism. But the scope of "Death by Medicine" is even wider. Conventional medicine, including unnecessary surgeries, bedsores and medical errors, is 104,700 percent deadlier than terrorism. Yet, our government's attention and money is not put into reforming health care.

Couldn't a little chunk of the homeland security money be better spent on overhauling the corrupt U.S. healthcare system, the leading cause of death in America? Couldn't we forfeit the color-coded threat system in favor of stricter guidelines on medical research and prescription drugs? No one is attempting to say that terrorism in the world is not a problem, especially for a high-profile country like the United States. No one is saying that the people who died on 9/11 didn't matter or weren't horribly wronged by the terrorists that day. But there are more dangerous things in the United States being falsely represented as safe and healthy, when, in reality, they are deadly. The corruption in the pharmaceutical industry and in America's healthcare system poses a far greater threat to the health, safety and welfare of Americans today than terrorism.

If the Bush Administration really wants to save lives -- a lot of lives -- it needs look no further than the chemical war has been declared on Americans by Big Pharma.