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A new study, published in the Journal of American Medical Association, examined all 222 drugs approved by the FDA between 2001 and 2010.
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- You must have watched those TV commercials with happy, smiling people telling how their symptoms of some relatively minor, non-life-threatening ailment have subsided thanks to a particular medication, while a voice in the background rushes the obligatory reading of side effects.
Those side effects are invariably many times worse than the illness they claim to alleviate, and as that voice tells you, they may even be fatal. - There is both a comical and a tragic aspect to those commercials, because although they are hilariously funny, you know these commercials influence desperate, trusting, vulnerable patients, and so the pharmaceutical industry continues to rake in billions in profits.
- Some doctors are complicit in the prescription of suspect pharmaceuticals because they have been influenced by benefits from the pharmaceutical industry.
- The current opioid crisis that is killing thousands of addicted people has its origin in the medical office, when doctors prescribe these extremely addictive medications for sometimes minor and temporary cases of pain.
- A landmark review (July 26, 2000) in the Journal of American Medical Association, by Dr. Barbara Starfield, found that, every year in the US, FDA approved drugs kill 106,000 people. Extrapolating to a decade, that would be a million deaths.
- Under Trump, the FDA is urged to speed up the drug-approval process. It’s good for business. For patients, it’s a disaster on top of the already existing disaster.
Recently it has been revealed that up to 30% of FDA-approved drugs have serious side effects. The new study is what intelligence agencies would call a limited hangout, which is a public admission of part of a problem or scandal that is, in fact, much bigger. The huge scandal, in this case, is the routine death-by-medicine numbers every year—which is ignored by the press and the government.
A new study, published in the Journal of American Medical Association, examined all 222 drugs approved by the FDA between 2001 and 2010.
The finding? Years after approval, roughly a third of the medicines were then labeled with warnings about serious adverse effects; and some of those warnings indicated life-threatening complications, such as cancer, liver damage. Consumption of many of them can result in death.
The Washington Post reports: “Among the drugs with added warnings [years after the drugs were approved, as safe, for public use]: Humira, used for arthritis and some other illnesses; Abilify, used for depression and other mental illness; and Pradaxa, a blood thinner. The withdrawn drugs [taken off the market] and the reason: Bextra, an anti-inflammatory medicine, heart problems; Raptiva, a psoriasis drug, rare nervous system illness; and Zelnorm, a bowel illness drug, heart problems.”
A pharma trade-group spokeswoman told the Post: “Even with rigorous clinical studies and regulatory review it may be impossible to detect certain safety signals until several years after approval, once the medicine is in broader use.”
In particular, drugs used to treat mental health issues such as depression, and those that had been rushed through the approval process, were more likely to have safety issues down the line.
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