Death by Medicine - Iatrogenesis
If you don't have time to read it, then at least take a look at the pictures!
Ignore this issue and you risk becoming a statistic!
Do you want to know why our law offices handle dangerous drug, defective medical device and medical malpractice claims world-wide in association with competent and experienced attorneys?
Here's some food for thought:
Did you know - if not, would you believe if you were told by honest, independent and competent scientists and doctors that
- The total number of deaths caused by conventional medicine in the U.S. is an astounding 783,936 per year,
- The American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the US,
- The true number of premature deaths associated with preventable harm to patients was estimated at more than 400,000 per year,
- Prescription drugs since 2000 are just 36 percent better than a placebo (i.e. no drug at all),
- 44 percent of frail, older patients were prescribed at least one drug unnecessarily,
- 36 percent of older adults take at least five prescription drugs since 2011,
- At least one in five older patients are on an inappropriate medication.
As they say, when there's doubt, there is no doubt -- so if you suspect that something went wrong in medical or pharmaceutical treatment, then please don't try to quash your concerns.
If you or someone that you know may have become a victim of medical malpratice, dangerous drugs or defective medical devices, then please seek the advice of an experienced and competent attorney in these fields.
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The Law Offices of Gregory Krasovsky:
Dangerous Drugs - http://krasovskylaw.com/individuals/dangerous-drugs.html
Defective Medical Products - http://krasovskylaw.com/individuals/defective-medical-productos-21.html
Medical Malpractice - http://krasovskylaw.com/individuals/medical-malpractice.html
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2018-01-18 Death by Medicine
Death by Medicine
Until now, Life Extension could cite only isolated statistics to make its case about the dangers of conventional medicine.
No one had ever analyzed and combined ALL of the published literature dealing with injuries and deaths caused by government-protected medicine. That has now changed. A group of researchers meticulously reviewed the statistical evidence and their findings are absolutely shocking.4 These researchers have authored a paper titled “Death by Medicine” that presents compelling evidence that today’s system frequently causes more harm than good. This fully referenced report shows the number of people having in-hospital, adverse reactions to prescribed drugs to be 2.2 million per year. The number of unnecessary antibiotics prescribed annually for viral infections is 20 million per year. The number of unnecessary medical and surgical procedures performed annually is 7.5 million per year. The number of people exposed to unnecessary hospitalization annually is 8.9 million per year. The most stunning statistic, however, is that the total number of deaths caused by conventional medicine is an astounding 783,936 per year. It is now evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the US. (By contrast, the number of deaths attributable to heart disease in 2001 was 699,697, while the number of deaths attributable to cancer was 553,251.5)
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Is American Medicine Working? US health care spending reached $1.6 trillion in 2003, representing 14% of the nation's gross national product.(15) Considering this enormous expenditure, we should have the best medicine in the world. We should be preventing and reversing disease, and doing minimal harm. Careful and objective review, however, shows we are doing the opposite. Because of the extraordinarily narrow, technologically driven context in which contemporary medicine examines the human condition, we are completely missing the larger picture. Medicine is not taking into consideration the following critically important aspects of a healthy human organism:
(a) stress and how it adversely affects the immune system and life processes;
(b) insufficient exercise;
(c) excessive caloric intake;
(d) highly processed and denatured foods grown in denatured and chemically damaged soil; and
(e) exposure to tens of thousands of environmental toxins. Instead of minimizing these disease-causing factors, we cause more illness through medical technology, diagnostic testing, overuse of medical and surgical procedures, and overuse of pharmaceutical drugs. The huge disservice of this therapeutic strategy is the result of little effort or money being spent on preventing disease. Underreporting of Iatrogenic Events As few as 5% and no more than 20% of iatrogenic acts are ever reported.(16,24,25,33,34)
This implies that if medical errors were completely and accurately reported, we would have an annual iatrogenic death toll much higher than 783,936. In 1994, Leape said his figure of 180,000 medical mistakes resulting in death annually was equivalent to three jumbo-jet crashes every two days.(16) Our considerably higher figure is equivalent to six jumbo jets are falling out of the sky each day.
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Iatrogenesis (from the Greek for "brought forth by the healer") refers to any effect on a person, resulting from any activity of one or more persons acting as healthcare professionals or promoting products or services as beneficial to health, that does not support a goal of the person affected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iatrogenesis
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Drug-Induced “Iatrogenic” Disorders: The Third Leading Cause of Death in the US and Britain Definition of an “iatrogenic” disorder: A disorder inadvertently induced by a health caregiver because of a surgical, medical, drug or vaccine treatment or by a diagnostic procedure. In 2000, a commentary article was written by Dr Barbara Stanfield, MD, MPH. It was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA, July 26, 2000—Vol 284, No. 4). The article was titled “Is US Health Really the Best in the World?” It has been posted here. In the article, Stanfield included the following statistics from her research about iatrogenic deaths. (Note: these numbers do not include out-patient iatrogenic deaths):
12,000 deaths/year from unnecessary surgery in hospitals 7,000 deaths/year from medication errors in hospitals 20,000 deaths/year from other errors in hospitals 80,000 deaths/year from nosocomial infections in hospitals 106,000 deaths/year from non-error, adverse effects of medications in hospitals Combining these five groups gives us a total of 225,000 in-patient deaths. The 225,000 number does not include out-patient deaths or disabilities. In any case, this number easily constitutes the third leading cause of death in the United States, behind heart disease and cancer (see the official list for 2015 below).
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Below are the US death statistics for 2015 (apparently the last year that the CDC has published the complete list). 1 Heart Disease – 633,842 2 Cancer – 595,930 3 Chronic lower respiratory diseases – 155,041 4 Unintentional injuries – 146,571 5 Cerebrovascular diseases – 140,323 6 Alzheimer’s disease – 110,561 7 Diabetes mellitus – 79,535 8 Influenza and pneumonia – 57,062 9 Nephrosis, nephrotic syndrome – 49,959 10 Suicide – 44,193 It is obvious that “Inpatient Iatrogenic Deaths” of 225,000 would easily come in 3rd, if the CDC would ever start collecting such data and publishing it as a separate category. ... If any reader has any doubt about the veracity of the Stanfield and Goetzsche claims, below are a couple of other courageous researchers that have delved into the issue. In 2016, a group of Johns Hopkins medical school researchers, led by Dr Martin Makary, published supporting information in the British Medical Journal. (BMJ 2016; 353). Death From Medical Care Itself “Medical error has been defined as an unintended act (either of omission or commission) or one that does not achieve its intended outcome, the failure of a planned action to be completed as intended (an error of execution), the use of a wrong plan to achieve an aim (an error of planning), or a deviation from the process of care that may or may not cause harm to the patient. Patient harm from medical error can occur at the individual or system level. The taxonomy of errors is expanding to better categorize preventable factors and events. We focus on preventable lethal events to highlight the scale of potential for improvement.” Makary’s group published data that supports iatrogenic deaths as the # 3 cause of death. In a 2016 open letter to the CDC, Makary’s group urged the agency to add medical errors to its annual list of common causes of death.
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As a partial defense of over-busy, over-booked, sometimes mentally and physically exhausted health caregivers in the US, another researcher, Dr John James, has published an article in the Journal of Patient Safety. Dr James makes similar claims urging the CDC to evaluate death statistics more logically. The title of his 2013 article is “A New, Evidence-based Estimate of Patient Harms Associated with Hospital Care”. (Journal of Patient Safety: September 2013 – Volume 9 – Issue 3 – p 122–128) ... Results Using a weighted average of the 4 studies, a lower limit of 210,000 deaths per year was associated with preventable harm in hospitals…the true number of premature deaths associated with preventable harm to patients was estimated at more than 400,000 per year. Serious (but non-lethal) harm seems to be 10- to 20-fold more common than lethal harm. https://www.globalresearch.ca/drug-induced-iatrogenic-disorders-the-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-the-us-and-britain/5626283
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Iatrogenic Disease: The 3rd Most Fatal Disease in the USA In any case, 225,000 deaths per year constitutes the third leading cause of death in the United States, after deaths from heart disease and cancer. Even if these figures are overestimated, there is a wide margin between these numbers of deaths and the next leading cause of death (cerebro-vascular disease). Another analysis concluded that between 4% and 18% of consecutive patients experience negative effects in outpatient settings, with: 116 million extra physician visits 77 million extra prescriptions 17 million emergency department visits 8 million hospitalizations 3 million long-term admissions 199,000 additional deaths $77 billion in extra costs The high cost of the health care system is considered to be a deficit, but it seems to be tolerated under the assumption that better health results from more expensive care. However, evidence from a few studies indicates that as many as 20% to 30% of patients receive inappropriate care. An estimated 44,000 to 98,000 among these patients die each year as a result of medical errors. This might be tolerable if it resulted in better health, but does it? Out of 13 countries in a recent comparison, the United States ranks an average of 12th (second from the bottom) for 16 available health indicators. More specifically, the ranking of the U.S. on several indicators was: 13th (last) for low-birth-weight percentages 13th for neonatal mortality and infant mortality overall 11th for post-neonatal mortality 13th for years of potential life lost (excluding external causes) 11th for life expectancy, at 1 year for females, 12th for males 10th for life expectancy, at 15 years for females, 12th for males 10th for life expectancy, at 40 years for females, 9th for males 7th for life expectancy, at 65 years for females, 7th for males 3rd for life expectancy, at 80 years for females, 3rd for males The poor performance of the U.S. was recently confirmed by a World Health Organization study which used different data and ranked the United States as 15th among 25 industrialized countries. It has been known that drugs are the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S. This makes it clear that the more frightening number is that doctors are the third leading cause of death in this country, killing nearly a quarter million people a year. http://www.yourmedicaldetective.com/public/335.cfm
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SHOCKING: This is one of the most dangerous places in America I’m talking about American hospitals. Most people have no idea how much risk they take by checking in. And the numbers keep getting worse with each revised study that comes out… In 1999, the first study of its kind found that up to 98,000 people a year die because of mistakes in hospitals. In 2010, the Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said that bad hospital care contributed to the deaths of 180,000 Medicare patients alone. And more recently, a study published in the Journal of Patient Safety claims that as many as 440,000 people die every year from hospital errors, injuries, accidents, and infections… that’s roughly one-sixth of all deaths that occur in the U.S. each year. ... your best defense in a hospital is to raise your concerns… and don’t let anyone, no matter if it’s a doctor or nurse, waive them aside. Talk to someone immediately if you think an error may have been made. And if you feel you’re being given unnecessary medications or surgery, ask for a “patient advocate” or even a different doctor. Medicine is big business, and you deserve the best service available… not what will make it easy for the doctors. http://thecrux.com/this-is-surprisingly-one-of-the-most-dangerous-places-in-america/
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How Many Pills Are Too Many? Austin Frakt April 10, 2017 Though many prescription drugs are highly valuable, taking them can also be dangerous, particularly taking a lot of them at once. The vast majority of higher-quality studies summarized in a systematic review on polypharmacy — the taking of multiple medications — found an association with a bad health event, like a fall, hospitalization or death. About one-third of adverse events in hospitalizations include a drug-related harm, leading to longer hospital stays and greater expense. The National Academy of Medicine estimated that there are 400,000 preventable adverse drug events in hospitals each year, costing $3.5 billion. One-fifth of patients discharged from the hospital have a drug-related complication after returning home, many of which are preventable. Not every adverse drug event means a patient has been prescribed an unnecessary and harmful drug. But older patients are at greater risk because they tend to have more chronic conditions and take a multiplicity of medications for them. Two-thirds of Medicare beneficiaries have two or more chronic conditions, and almost half take five or more medications. Over a year, almost 20 percent take 10 or more drugs or supplements. Some are unnecessary. At least one in five older patients are on an inappropriate medication — one that they can do without or that can be switched to a different, safer drug. One study found that 44 percent of frail, older patients were prescribed at least one drug unnecessarily. A study of over 200,000 older veterans with diabetes found that over half were candidates for dropping a blood pressure or blood sugar control medication. Some studies cite even higher numbers — 60 percent of older Americans may be on a drug they don’t need. ... So why isn’t deprescribing more widely considered? According to a systematic review of research on the question, some physicians are not aware that they’re prescribing inappropriately. Other doctors may have difficulty identifying which drugs are inappropriate, in part because of lack of evidence. In other cases, doctors believe that adverse effects of drug interactions are outweighed by benefits. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/10/upshot/how-many-pills-are-too-many.html
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New Drugs Are Barely An Improvement Over Decades-Old Standbys, Study Finds The new study in the journal Health Affairs examined 315 clinical trials that compared a drug to a placebo and were published in four of the world’s top medical journals (BMJ, Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine) from 1966 to 2010. The drugs targeted the full range of human ills, from cardiovascular disease and infections to cancer, mental disorders and respiratory illness. In the early years, drugs easily beat the placebo: They were, on average, 4.5 times as effective, where effectiveness means how well they lowered blood pressure, vanquished tumors, lifted depression or did whatever else they were intended to. But the trend line was inexorably downhill, found Dr Mark Olfson of Columbia University and statistician Steven Marcus of the University of Pennsylvania. By the 1980s drugs were less than four times better; by the 1990s, twice as good, and by the 2000s just 36 percent better than a placebo. Since older drugs were much superior to placebo and newer ones only slightly so, that means older drugs were generally more effective than newer ones. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/03/new-drugs-effectiveness-old-medicines_n_3380347.html
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What Older Adults Are Taking Qato and her colleagues conducted in-home interviews with more than 2,000 people across the nation, aged 62 to 85 years. They found the percentage of older adults taking at least five prescription drugs rose from about 30 percent to almost 36 percent between 2005 and 2011. ... Qato said the dangers of mixing medications have a wide range. The combinations can eliminate the effects of prescription drugs, in particular those that are taken for heart health. She said more dangerous conditions may also arise. These include bleeding, renal failure, and heart attacks or strokes. https://www.healthline.com/health-news/older-americans-taking-dangerous-drug-combinations#4
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