Many People Get Kill by Doctor, Prescription Drugs, Hospital …

100,000 Deaths Per Year In The U.S. Caused By Prescription Drugs

Mercola reports:

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 100,000 Americans die from reactions to prescription drugs each year, making this the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S. The death toll from ILLEGAL drugs stands at 10,000. Houston (and every other part of the country), we have a problem….

The side effects of prescription medication can be horrific. Is it really worth taking medication if the cure is worse than the disease?

Here 26 side effects that come with many prescription drugs currently on the market.

Drainage, crusting, or oozing of your eyes or eyelids
Swollen, black, or “hairy” tongue
Changes in the shape or location of body fat
Decrease in testicle size
Sores or swelling in your rectal or genital area
Blue lips or fingernails
Purple spots on your skin
White patches or sores inside your mouth or on your lips
Irregular back-and- forth movements of your eyes
Enlarged breasts in males.
Unusual risk-taking behavior, no fear of danger
Extreme fear
Hallucinations, fainting, coma
Fussiness, irritability, crying for an hour or longer
Paralysis
Thoracic Hematoma (bleeding into your chest)
A blood clot in your lung
Liver damage
Kidney damage
A lump in your breast
Decreased bone marrow function
Congestive heart failure
Shingles
Nerve pain lasting for several weeks or months
Bleeding that will not stop
Coughing up blood or vomit that looks like coffee grounds
One drug on the market, EvaMist — a treatment for menopause symptoms such as hot flashes — has possible side effects that include cancer, stroke, heart attack, blood clots, and dementia!

But this is only a partial list of the potential side effects of prescription drugs. There are, unfortunately, many more out there.

Dr. Mercola’s Comments:

Every year, more than 2 million Americans suffer from serious adverse drug reactions. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), these reactions cause about 100,000 deaths per year, making prescription drugs the fourth-leading cause of death in the country.

Compare this to the death toll from illegal drugs — which is about 10,000 per year — and you begin to see the magnitude of the problem.

However, if you dig a little deeper you find that these reported reactions only skim the surface of what’s really going on. You see, drug side effects are not always recognized as such. Doctors often attribute them to other causes, people downplay them or do not report them altogether. And when you add in other medical errors, unnecessary procedures, and surgery-related mishaps, well the modern health care system actually becomes the LEADING cause of death in the United States. Consider, for instance, that:
The recorded error rate of ICU’s is like the post office losing more than 16,000 pieces of mail every hour of every day, or banks deducting 32,000 checks from the wrong bank account every hour, 24/7.
The recorded medical errors and deaths equate to six jumbo jets falling out of the sky each day, 365 days a year.
Since 2001, a recorded 490,000 people have died from properly prescribed drugs in the United States, while 2,996 people died on U.S. soil from terrorism, all in the 9/11 attacks; prescription drugs are therefore 16,400 percent more dangerous than terrorism. If deaths from over-the-counter drugs are also included, then drug consumption leaps to being 32,000 percent more dangerous than terrorism. And conventional medicine viewed as a whole is 104,700 percent deadlier than terrorism
Your Body is Not a Petri Dish

How can it be that clinically tested, FDA-approved drugs that are supposed to “cure” diseases are ending up hurting, and in some cases killing, so many people?

Because even under the BEST circumstances, such as a drug going through unbiased, stringent, long-term testing, when it is released into an uncontrolled environment (your body), anything can happen.

You may be taking another drug that interacts badly with it. Or perhaps a food you eat causes an unforeseen reaction. There are countless possibilities, and only a tiny fraction has been “tested for” in a lab.

And that is under the best circumstances. Often, studies are biased, results are skewed, and drugs are put on a fast-track to be approved before anyone really knows whether they’re safe. In a sense, it is all a gamble, and there are no 100-percent safe drugs.

This is why just about every time you open a newspaper or skim the news online, there is a new headline about another drug disaster: an unforeseen side effect that has harmed innocent people.

It’s YOUR Body

The take-home message from all of this is to remember that, ultimately, it’s your body, and your decision what to put in it. If your doctor suggests you take a drug, do some research before you take it, because once you do, it could be too late.

Make sure you are aware of the potential side effects of the drug, read the package insert, and remember that even if it lists a side effect as rare, it can still happen to you.

Many, many drugs are vastly over-prescribed and unnecessary. So make sure that you make drugs a last option, not a first choice. For example, all of the following conditions can be treated or prevented with LIFESTYLE CHANGES, yet if you go to a typical doctor, you will likely be prescribed a potentially dangerous drug instead:
Diabetes
Heart disease
High blood pressure
High cholesterol
Insomnia
I realize that it takes a massive shift in thinking to realize that your body can heal itself, and that often drugs only hinder the process. But I believe that you, and society as a whole, are ready for it.

But here’s the thing: don’t wait until you’re sick or slowing down to make healthy changes. Do them NOW. Become an active participant in your health, and leave the horrific prescription drug side effects behind for good.

https://newspunch.com/100000-deaths-per-year-in-the-u-s-caused-by-prescription-drugs/

Doctor and die by Gun

Your doctor is FAR more likely to kill you than an armed criminal

It’s true: You are 64 times more likely to be killed by your doctor than by someone else wielding a gun. That’s because 19,766 of the total 31,940 gun deaths in the USA (in the year 2011) were suicides. So the actual number of deaths from other people shooting you is only 12,174.

Doctors, comparatively, kill 783,936 people each year, which is 64 times higher than 12,174. Doctors shoot you not with bullets, but with vaccines, chemotherapy and pharmaceuticals … all of which turn out to be FAR more deadly than guns.

This is especially amazing, given that there are just under 700,000 doctors in America, while there are roughly about 80 million gun owners in America.

How do 700,000 doctors manage to kill 783,936 people each year (that’s over one death per doctor), while 80 million gun owners kill only 31,940? Because owning a gun is orders of magnitude safer than “practicing” medicine!

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/doctors-kill-more-people-than-guns/

The third-leading cause of death in US most doctors don’t want you to know about

• A recent Johns Hopkins study claims more than 250,000 people in the U.S. die every year from medical errors. Other reports claim the numbers to be as high as 440,000.

• Medical errors are the third-leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/medical-errors-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-america.html

https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2016/04/05/hospital-stay.aspx

Death By Prescription
By one estimate, taking prescribed medications is the fourth leading cause of death among Americans.
By Michael O. Schroeder Staff WriterSept. 27, 2016, at 9:00 a.m.

Americans are taking more medications than ever before.
Nearly 60 to 70 percent of us take at least one prescribed drug, depending upon the estimate; for many it amounts to a fistful, potpourri of pills per day. Meanwhile, new drug approvals have reached a 19-year high. It’s a mark cheered notably for the swift minting of medications to tackle so-called “orphan diseases,” rare conditions for which few or no treatment options exist. But critics say an expedited drug approval process is opening the door for riskier drugs – including many not proven to provide unique benefits over drugs already on the market.
Even as an opioid overdose crisis sweeps the country, another ubiquitous, insidious danger is hidden from view. There’s no formal process for quantifying injuries, hospitalizations or even deaths caused by therapeutic drug use – which excludes overdose or misuse. “Risk management begins with measuring things accurately, so you know what the threats are and the ones where you should be paying attention,” says Thomas J. Moore, senior scientist for drug safety and policy at the Institute for Safe Medication Practices. But he notes that there’s no system in place or accepted methodology for developing these tallies for prescription drugs, unlike with overdoses. Health providers and consumers are encouraged to report adverse drug reactions to the Food and Drug Administration, and the agency can issue safety communications, require drug label warnings and pull drugs from the market, among other risk management measures. But the FDA says it’s unable to use the incomplete adverse event reporting data to quantify overall deaths that result from therapeutic drug use.
The difficulty involved in trying to estimate the toll, however, hasn’t stopped Moore and other researchers from seeking to quantify how many people die annually from taking prescribed drugs – often by closely evaluating hospital admission studies. Estimates dating back nearly two decades put the number at 100,000 or more deaths annually, which includes a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1998 that projected 106,000 deaths. A more recent analysis estimates 128,000 Americans die each year as a result of taking medications as prescribed – or nearly five times the number of people killed by overdosing on prescription painkillers and heroin.

Experts say medication safety involves more than just taking drugs as prescribed.
Michael O. SchroederSept. 27, 2016

“By far the greatest number of [prescription drug-related] hospitalizations and deaths occur from drugs that are prescribed properly by physicians and taken as directed,” says Donald Light, a medical and economic sociologist and lead author of a 2013 paper that detailed the estimate, entitled “Institutional Corruption of Pharmaceuticals and the Myth of Safe and Effective Drugs.” “About 2,460 people per week are estimated to die from drugs that were properly prescribed, and that’s based on detailed chart reviews of hospitalized patients,” says Light, who is a professor of comparative health policy at Rowan University School of Osteopathic Medicine in Stratford, New Jersey. The estimate, which didn’t include those who died as a result of prescribing errors, overdose and self-medication, would make taking properly prescribed drugs the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S.
For those taking them, prescription drugs can provide myriad benefits from treating infections that could be potentially life-threatening to preventing stroke or helping manage a chronic condition. And frequently any side effects experienced are relatively minor. However, depending upon the analysis, adverse drug reactions are estimated to result in approximately 1.5 to 2.7 million hospitalizations each year. And though following a doctor’s orders and medication labeling instructions can reduce harms associated with taking prescription drugs, simply taking prescribed drugs as directed can expose a person to significant risk.
“Most people who are harmed by prescription drugs [are] taking the drug as prescribed,” says Dr. Michael Carome, director of the Health Research Group at the consumer watchdog Public Citizen. Even the best projections of medication-related death and injury are likely underestimates of the harm inflicted, he says, since often these adverse events may be errantly attributed to another cause, like a patient’s underlying condition.
Conversely, one difficulty in understanding the potential harm a medication may cause is that even hindsight isn’t always 20/20. It can be hard to discern the role a specific drug played when a patient develops a new health problem – particularly if a patient has multiple health conditions and is on numerous medications. “Some cases are really easy to determine; some get very difficult to determine,” Moore says.
But while complexities present challenges to pinpointing the number, Carome says population growth and aging are likely to further increase injuries and deaths resulting from taking prescription medications. “As people get older they tend to have more illnesses, and they end up taking more prescriptions,” he says, which can increase the chances drugs will interact in a dangerous way. In addition, kidney and liver function can decline with age, making it harder to metabolize drugs – thus increasing the risk of side effects.
And even a single drug taken in isolation has the potential to cause serious harm. “There’s no such thing as a risk-free drug,” he says.

The Harm in What’s New
For all the hoopla that may surround certain new drugs, it’s also during the time shortly after drugs are approved when safety issues often become apparent. “We have what’s called a seven-year drug rule,” Carome explains. Within the first seven years after a drug is approved, it’s common for safety warnings – including the FDA’s strongest, the “black box” warning – to come to light, Carome says. And it’s within the same period, he adds, that drugs are often withdrawn from the market because of serious safety concerns.
“We advise people not to take the drug for seven years” after approval, he says, with exceptions only for actual breakthrough drugs, which Carome contends are few and far between. Those that offer a unique breakthrough treatment compared to what’s already on the market – like those that treat orphan diseases – would be one such example. But even in those instances, because of the limited safety information available, he recommends proceeding with caution.

Helen Haskell, president of the nonprofit safety organization Mothers Against Medical Error, says it’s not just patients but doctors who frequently don’t always have the full picture about risks of prescribed drugs. Even when that information is available, she adds, doctors aren’t necessarily aware of every drug risk, given harried schedules and all there is to know in medicine. So doctors often rely on information drug reps provide, patient advocates say. And research finds that health providers routinely overstate the perceived benefits of drugs – as with medical procedures – while downplaying or not discussing harms.
Haskell’s rule of thumb: If you’re taking a new-to-you medication (whether newly approved or not), and you experience a new symptom, suspect the medication first. It may seem counterintuitive, and many doctors may be loathe to blame the drug they prescribed for how lousy you feel, but Haskell says it’s more important that patients report such symptoms, which could be side effects. Also, ask about alternatives to the medication.
Infographic: Before You Pop That Pill
How you can reduce your prescription drug risk.
Nathan Hellman and Michael O. SchroederSept. 27, 2016

While some patient advocates – as well as members of Congress – have applauded the FDA for expediting the approval process for breakthrough drug treatments, the agency has also faced sharp criticism for not doing enough to reduce the likelihood patients could be harmed by newly approved medications.
Since drugmaker Merck yanked the blockbuster painkiller Vioxx (approved in 1999) in 2004 due to an increased risk of strokes and heart attacks, only a few other new drugs have been pulled from the market; that includes Abbott Laboratories’ agreeing to withdraw the diet drug Meridia, approved in 1997, in 2010, after it was also found to increase the risk of strokes and heart attacks. And Carome says the agency now seems reluctant to pull new drugs off the market.
But the FDA asserts that neither in its approval process or post-marketing monitoring has it lagged on safety as it works to more quickly greenlight certain drugs.
“Today, thanks to the efforts of those across the FDA, we are delivering new, lifesaving therapies to patients faster than any other developed country and more expeditiously than ever before,” FDA spokeswoman Sandy Walsh wrote in an email. “In addition, we have significantly strengthened the drug safety surveillance system in the United States, modernized drug review processes, and introduced new genomic and related sciences into the drug evaluation process.”
[See: 5 Common Preventable Medical Errors.]
Reward and Risk
In addition to monitoring drugs already on the market, the FDA has sought to meet demand for newer therapies to treat rare diseases, approving drugs in 2015 ranging from Orkambi – a therapy for the lung disease cystic fibrosis – to an enzyme replacement therapy called Strensiq to treat patients with infantile- and juvenile-onset hypophosphatasia, a bone disease that can be fatal.
The 45 new medicines approved by the FDA last year provide patients with important new treatment options and will play a key role in helping them live longer, healthier lives, wrote Andrew Powaleny, a spokesman for the industry trade association PhRMA, in an email. “More than a third of the new medicines approved were first-in-class treatment options – offering a completely new way to treat diseases – and nearly half were for rare conditions. Among the new medicines are innovative cancer treatments with the potential to prolong and transform patients’ lives.”
However, some health experts and consumer advocates, including Carome, say that drugs approved in areas where a range of treatment options already exist – from managing diabetes to controlling cholesterol – tend to offer little or no new benefits, compared to less costly and more proven treatments already on the market, while increasing risk. “Newer patented drugs have much higher prices, and yet the vast majority of new patented drugs have been shown by independent review groups to be little or no better than older post-patent drugs that sell at generic prices,” Light adds.
But the FDA’s Deputy Center Director for Clinical Science, Dr. Robert Temple, contends that comparing effectiveness of drugs isn’t always the best approach. “Some people do better on one drug than another very similar drug and you don’t always know the reason,” Temple writes on the FDA’s site.
Even so, pills, like cars, can turn out to be lemons. So, experts say, don’t assume a brand-name drug is better than a less expensive generic or even that a doctor-recommended drug is necessarily the best option for you in a particular drug class.
Infographic: The Promise – and Risk – of New Drugs
Serious medication harms can undercut benefits.
Nancy Pham and Michael O. SchroederSept. 27, 2016

To bone-up on drug safety information, start by going to the FDA’s website to read the drug label and see reported adverse events, and check out independent analysis on drug harms. Older adults should also consider the American Geriatrics Society Updated Beers Criteria, which identifies medications seniors should avoid or use with caution. Last updated in 2012, clinicians and pharmacists say this remains a very useful and important list for seniors when weighing drug benefits against harms. Incorporate risk comparisons in discussing drug choices and alternatives with your doctor.

As it relates to expediting the approval process for novel drug therapies, including to treat rare conditions, the FDA remains bullish – while deflecting concerns that increasing the speed of approval increases the risk for patient harm. “Scientific research has helped us better understand the mechanisms of a disease and allow for targeted drug development. When we see signs of efficacy early on in the development process, we need to find the fastest path to get a product on the market,” Walsh says. She adds that the FDA “applies the same statutory approval standard of safety and efficacy to new drugs that we’ve always applied. Increased flexibility does not alter our fidelity to the science and our commitment to patient safety.”
[See: 8 Questions to Ask Your Pharmacist.]

https://health.usnews.com/health-news/patient-advice/articles/2016-09-27/the-danger-in-taking-prescribed-medications

5 Common Preventable Medical Errors

More Than 200,000 Preventable Deaths a Year
The hospital is supposed to be a safe place. When you take a sick or injured child there, “your shoulders drop, you relax, thinking they’re in good hands,” says Joe Kiani, founder of the Patient Safety Movement Foundation. “The last thing you imagine is that environment killing your child.” But it happens. Each year, more than 200,000 people die from preventable medical errors and up to 20 times more suffer from errors but don’t die from them, Kiani says. Here are five common medical errors – and what you can do to help prevent them.

1. Medication Errors
Wrong drug, wrong dose, bad combination, bad reaction. When it comes to medications, innocent mistakes hurt about 1.5 million people each year, according to the Institute of Medicine. Arm yourself by asking hospital staff what you’re taking, how much, how often and why, Kiani says. That way, when someone from your medical team comes in to administer drugs, you can match your instructions against theirs “to make sure it’s the right medication – and the right dose,” he says.

2. Too Many Blood Transfusions
Red blood cell transfusions are one of the most common procedure in U.S. hospitals, but nearly 60 percent globally were deemed “inappropriate” procedures by a 2011 study. Other research shows the more blood cells a patient receives, the higher his or her risk for infection. Some studies have even found the procedures to boost risk for death and disease. Before you or a loved one undergoes a transfusion, ask why it’s necessary. “Don’t be afraid to speak up,” says Anna Noonan, vice president of the James M. Jeffords Institute for Quality & Operational Effectiveness at the University of Vermont Medical Center. “This is your health.”

3. Too Much Oxygen for Premature Babies
Oxygen is like a drug: “Too much is not good, too little isn’t good,” says Noonan, a registered nurse, who adds that you have to find “the sweet spot” when pumping it into premature babies since an oxygen overdose can cause blindness. The Vermont Medical Center where she works has implemented guidelines that help clinicians identify that sweet spot based on the baby’s weight. “It’s a simple thing but a very powerful thing that obviously has very long-lasting implications,” Noonan says.

4. Health Care-Associated Infections
Go to the hospital to get better, go home feeling worse. Unfortunately, on any given day, about 1 in every 25 hospital patients contracts an infection, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. Fortunately, the most effective solution is straightforward: Remind your clinician to wash his or her hands. “Hand-washing is the simplest, least costly and probably the most powerful intervention that we can implement to reduce health care-associated infections,” Noonan says. “The patient engagement in that is critical.”

5. Infections From Central Lines
One type of health care-associated infection is caused by tubes of medicine or fluids usually inserted into large veins, which create “a highway for bacteria to get into the blood or into the bladder,” says Dr. Arjun Srinivasan, associate director for Healthcare Associated Infection Prevention Programs at the CDC. For patients, being proactive is key since studies show clinicians sometimes forget about lines, Srinivasan says. “That reminder from the patient can be the impetus for the treatment team to … take it out.”

https://health.usnews.com/health-news/patient-advice/slideshows/5-common-preventable-medical-errors?slide=2