Medicine's Deadly Toll

by Harold Stearley

The Toronto team of scientists conducted a "meta-study" that analyzed thirty years of previous research, finding that there are an average of 2,216,000 adverse drug reactions (ADRs) every year and 106,000 deaths. Before exploring that shocking statistic (and the "weasel words" the medical profession is using to describe them), please consider a bit more interesting data from our scientific community.

One study revealed that deaths caused by ADRs accounted for "only" about 20 percent of all deaths caused by practitioners in hospital settings. Why is that significant? Just think: If ADRs are only responsible for 20 percent of deaths caused by bad medicine, then those 106,000 deaths mean that we're really killing closer to 500,000 people each and every year. Some of these studies still need to be "adjusted" by more current scientific methods, so let's say (conservatively) that only a quarter of million people die each year from "medicine."

That's not all. In 1991, the Harvard Medical Practice Study revealed that approximately 180,000 deaths each year are directly attributable to gross medical negligence -- the equivalent of three jumbo jets crashing and burning every other day. Several studies followed this one in an attempt to disprove these numbers, but medical researchers just couldn't get this fly out of their ointment.

So where does the trail of guilt lead? Start with the drug manufacturers who produce the poison. They downplay nasty side effects and lethal results of their products, spending upwards of 25 percent of their multi-million dollar budgets to convince physicians they need to prescribe their latest brand of toxic cocktails. Next in line is the physician who orders the treatment, the pharmacist who fills the orders, and the nurse who administers the lethal dosages. And let's not leave out the corporate mongers of greed -- the administrators of hospitals, HMOs, and insurance companies who have cut professional staff and treatment options to the bone.

The real message of the University of Toronto study is this: Health care itself is the fourth leading cause of death in this country -- not some anomalous ADR. Put another way: Roughly 1 American in 100 will have a problem with medications prescribed by a doctor or other health professional. If you're in that unlucky one percent, chances are 1 in 20 that you will die.

It's time to wake up and face these hard realities, recognize these errors for what they are and fix the system. In all sixteen years of the Vietnam War, we only lost some 57,137 American lives. It looks as though we are engaged in another war right here at home which needs to be fought -- a war shrouded in the language of denial.