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.
