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2.2 Million Adverse Drug Reactions Kill 106,000
Annually!Drug
Death Toll Due to Known Side-Effects!
by Clark Hansen, N.M.D.
April 15, 1998 -- Data from U.S. hospital records show that
2,216,000 hospitalized patients had serious Adverse Drug Reactions
(ADRs) and 106,000 died, making these ADRs the fourth leading
cause of death.
To estimate the incidence of serious and fatal adverse drug
reactions (ADR) in U.S. hospital patients, four electronic databases
were searched from 1966 to 1996. The researchers excluded errors
in drug administration, noncompliance, overdose, drug abuse,
therapeutic failures, and possible ADRs. Serious ADRs were defined
as those that required hospitalization, were permanently disabling,
or resulted in death.
These 2.2 million ADRs and 106,000 fatalities were all determined
to be due to known side effects of the drugs. The researchers
who analyzed the data from U.S. hospital records were careful
to exclude errors in giving the wrong drug, cases of drug overdose,
drug abuse, not taking the right drug, therapeutic failures,
and possible ADRs.
These astounding numbers
of ADRs and fatalities were all confirmed, which leads us to
assume that there was an even larger number
of suspected ADR’s that could not be confirmed and thus
were not reported.
Consumers must ask their doctors about drug side effects. The
FDA should require mandatory dispensing of complete drug information
in terms the lay public can understand and require WARNING LABELS
on all drugs that have been associated with serious or fatal
ADRs.
The current FDA requirement
that drug companies publish the pharmaceutical / physician
drug information with any advertised
drug is Latin to everyone else. It appears that the pharmaceutical
companies do it intentionally to prevent the public from discovering
the real truth about the lack of known actions of the drugs as
well as their side effects. The data is their, its just buried
in thousands of words of medical jargon that’s too technical
and too tiny for any one to read but a scientist with very thick
glasses or a microscope.
SOURCE: JAMA (Journal of the American Medical
Association) 1998 Apr 15;279(15):1200-1205
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