Posts Tagged ‘prescription drugs’

Americans drowning in prescription drugs

Monday, September 6th, 2010
health

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com

(NaturalNews) Nearly half of all Americans now use prescription drugs on a regular basis according to a CDC report that was just released (1). Nearly a third of Americans use two or more drugs, and more than one in ten use five or more prescription drugs regularly.

The report also revealed that one in five children are being regularly given prescription drugs, and nine out of ten seniors are on drugs.

All these drugs came at a cost of over $234 billion in 2008. The most commonly-used drugs were:

• Statin drugs for older people
• Asthma drugs for children
• Antidepressants for middle-aged people
• Amphetamine stimulants for children

America has become a nation of druggies. The seniors are being drugged for nearly every symptom a doctor can find, children are being doped up with (legalized) speed, and middle-aged soccer moms are popping suicide pills (antidepressants).

Prescription drug addictions are on the rise, too. Prescription drugs are so dangerous that now even the DEA is hosting “take back your pills” day allowing citizens to anonymously surrender their unused prescription painkillers to DEA agents. (http://www.herald-dispatch.com/news…)

Interestingly, DEA agents will only accept “legal” amphetamine drugs such as Ritalin but not “illegal” methamphetamine drugs. You’re only off the hook if you paid monopoly prescription prices for your drugs.

And it’s only going to get worse

The percentage of Americans taking prescription drugs is expected to rise even further as the health reform insurance regulations kick in. Much of the bill was specifically designed to favor pharmaceutical industry interests by putting even more people on medication. Expect to see more “screening” too — a thinly disguised drug recruitment method that primarily seeks to ensnare new patients in a high-profit drug regimen.

The mass medication of American citizens has reached a disturbing tipping point where the future of the nation itself is at risk. That’s because pharmaceuticals cause cognitive decline, and once you get to the point where over 50 percent of the voters can’t think straight, you’re trapped in a crumbling Democracy.

And that doesn’t even take into consideration the financial cost of America’s addiction to drugs: With nearly one out of every five dollars out of the entire U.S. economy now being spent on sickness and disease, America finds herself stuck in a cycle of high-cost drug treatments that cure no one.

That’s right: No one gets healthier from taking prescription drugs. They don’t cure anyone and they don’t prevent disease. They only maintain patients in a kind of “pre-death stasis” where they’re alive just enough to keep buying more medication. Drug companies don’t want you dead because that would cut off their profits. But they don’t want you healthy, either, because then they wouldn’t have you as a customer. So their drugs are actually designed to keep you in a state of ongoing disease without curing your condition but also without killing you outright.

You sort of chemically limp along, shelling out dollars while your memory fades and your skin starts to show signs of severe toxicity. Big Pharma is not merely sapping the life out of you; it’s also draining you financially.

Isn’t it obvious that pharmaceuticals don’t work?

If pharmaceuticals really worked to make people healthy, then the half of America currently taking pharmaceuticals would be the healthiest half, and the people who don’t take pharmaceuticals would be unhealthy, right?

But in fact it’s the other way around: People who take pharmaceuticals remain unhealthy and really never get cured of anything. Meanwhile, those who avoid taking pharmaceuticals are, by and large, far healthier individuals.

If America were running a grand experiment to determine whether pharmaceuticals really work — and trust me, the country really is running precisely that experiment — any reasonable observer would have to conclude that pharmaceuticals really don’t improve the health of those who take them. The more pharmaceuticals you take, in fact, the sicker you will become. That’s because drugs cause an imbalance in the body that soon leads to the emergence of other side effects.

At the same time, many of the drugs people take actually cause the very things they claim to prevent. Osteoporosis drugs cause hip fractures. Cancer drugs cause cancer. Antidepressants cause suicidal thoughts. The list goes on and on.

Read the rest of this article here:  http://www.naturalnews.com/029664_prescription_drugs_Americans.html

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New poll shows 81% of consumers are concerned over Pharma’s financial relationships with their doctors

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

FiercePharma
By Tracy Staton
August 25, 2010

Another poll is showing that Americans skip drug doses to save money. More than 27 percent of adults told Consumer Reports that they’d skimped on their prescription meds, by forgoing doses, splitting pills to stretch their supplies, postponing refills and more.

Another part of the poll reported that Americans don’t trust their doctors to think independently about prescription drugs, not when Big Pharma is involved. Almost 70 percent of consumers surveyed think drugmakers have too much influence on physicians, and 81 percent say they’re worried about pharma gifts to–and financial relationships with–their doctors.

Half of the 1,150 people polled said they think doctors pick up their prescription pads too quickly, preferring drugs to non-pharma treatments such as lifestyle changes. Almost half said doctors are unduly influenced by gifts from drugmakers. Some 41 percent think doctors tend to prescribe newer, pricier drugs rather than older, cheaper alternatives.

Read the entire article here:  http://www.fiercepharma.com/story/patients-worry-pharma-taints-doctors-decisions/2010-08-25

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Study finds 85% of new drugs offer few if any benefits & are significant cause of US deaths due to toxic side effects

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

Pharmalot
By Ed Silverman
August 23, 2010

The lemon, of course, is a metaphor and is not a pretty one. But Donald Light, a sociologist and professor of comparative health policy at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, contends that the spate of instances in which drugmakers hid or downplayed info about serious side effects – or overstated benefits – has transformed the market for medicines into one for lemons.

“The basic idea is simple but arresting: just as there are hidden dangers and flaws in used cars, so there are in drugs. And just as used car salesmen have an incentive to profit from not disclosing risks the consumer cannot see under the shiny exterior, so drug companies and their reps have an incentive to profit from not disclosing risks the physician and patient cannot see inside a shiny new pill. In a number of ways, however, drug markets differ from used car markets. One way is that bad drugs do not drive good drugs out of the market, as Akerlof famously predicted in the article that helped him win the Nobel Prize. Rather, they stay in, mixed with higher risk drugs,” Light tells us, after presenting a paper on the subject at the American Sociological Association annual meeting last week.

According to his study, which is not yet published, independent reviewers found that about 85 percent of new drugs offer few if any new benefits. At the same time, though, prescription drugs are now a significant cause of death in the US due to toxic side effects or misuse. He notes that drugmakers spend “two to three times more on marketing than on research,” which are dollars used to persuade docs to prescribe new drugs. But the docs, he maintains, may get misleading info and then pass along the same info to patients. In his view, this is a “two-tier market” for lemons.

And in his study, Light says drugmakers have taken advantage of this two-tier system information market and monopoly rights to create what can he calls “the risk proliferation syndrome,” which consists of corporate, government, and medical practices that maximize the number of drugs put on the market with risks of adverse reactions and then maximize the number of people induced to take them.

Read entire article here:  http://www.pharmalot.com/2010/08/drugmakers-actually-make-lemons-not-medicines/

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Psychiatric drug use skyrockets in U.S. military

Monday, July 26th, 2010

Natural News
By David Gutierrez
July 26, 2010

Use of prescription psychotropics has skyrocketed among U.S. military personnel in recent years, according to an investigation by Military Times.

At least 17 percent of active-duty military personnel are currently taking an antidepressant, including as many as 6 percent of all deployed troops. In contrast, the rate of antidepressant use in the wider U.S. public is only 10 percent.

Overall, one in six military service members takes at least one type of psychiatric drug. The numbers are probably higher than estimated, since troops are also known to share and trade prescription drugs with each other, even while in combat zones.

Data obtained from the Defense Logistics Agency show that overall use of psychiatric drugs increased by 76 percent between 2001 and 2009. More specifically, use of anti-seizure drugs increased 70 percent, use of sedatives and anxiety drugs increased 170 percent, and antipsychotic use increased 200 percent.

Spending on anticonvulsants increased from $16 million to $35 million per year, spending on anxiety drugs and sedatives increased from $6 million to $17 million, and spending on antipsychotics increased from $4 million to $16 million.

Although antidepressants are among the drugs most commonly taken by military personnel, their use increased only 40 percent between 2001 and 2009. Spending actually dropped by 16 percent, likely reflecting the new availability of less-expensive generic drugs.

According to a 2009 study by the Veterans Affairs Administration, approximately 60 percent of psychiatric drug use by military personnel is for “off-label” uses not approved by the FDA. Thus, antipsychotic drugs intended for the treatment of schizophrenia are now being widely prescribed for post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms such as anger, headaches, nervousness and nightmares.

“Patients may be exposed to drugs that have problematic side effects without deriving any benefit,” said Robert Rosenheck of Yale University. “We just don’t know. There haven’t been very many studies.”

Further compounding concern over side effects, many troops regularly mix two or more drugs together into untested cocktails. The effects of multiple drugs acting in unison have rarely been tested. When both drugs act on the same organ — in this case, the brain — the chance of unforeseen interactions is even greater.

“In the case of poly-drug use — the ‘cocktail’ — where you are combining an antidepressant, an anticonvulsant, an antipsychotic, and maybe a stimulant to keep this guy awake — that has never been tested,” Breggin said.

Among the side effects that some health professionals worry about are impaired motor skills, reduced reaction time, increased suicide risk, irritability, aggressiveness and hostility.

“Imagine causing that in men and women who are heavily armed and under a great deal of stress,” psychiatrist Peter Breggin said.

Read entire article:  http://www.naturalnews.com/029285_psychiatric_drugs_military.html

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Prescription Drug Epidemic Spreads to Babies

Friday, July 16th, 2010

St. Petersburg Times
By Richard Martin
July 16, 2010

Dr. Mary Newport sees the symptoms more and more in the babies she treats: oddly stiff limbs, severe tremors, vomiting, diarrhea, insomnia, crying that never stops.

The common denominator: Their mothers were taking prescription drugs, mostly painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin, and antianxiety drugs like Xanax during pregnancy.

Some of the moms had no idea these medications would hurt their developing babies — after all, it’s not like it’s heroin or cocaine, many think.

“They are seriously misinformed,” said Newport, medical director of Spring Hill Regional Hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit.

The prescription drug epidemic, well documented among teens and adults, now is claiming victims before they are even born. Tampa Bay area doctors and addiction specialists are reporting a dramatic increase in the number of pregnant addicts and infants needing treatment for withdrawal from prescription drugs.

The trend is reminiscent of the “crack baby” epidemic of the 1980s, when mothers used crack cocaine during their pregnancies.

But area neonatologists say that in some ways, the current trend is worse. Some women don’t understand that prescription drugs can be dangerous during pregnancy. Others decide to stop the drugs as soon as they learn they are pregnant, causing sudden withdrawal that can lead to miscarriage.

And doctors say that treating a baby with drugs like oxycodone, methadone or Xanax in the system takes longer, and involves more medication, than treatment for heroin or cocaine.

“Babies are suffering more,” said Dr. Terri Ashmeade, medical director of Tampa General Hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit. “Withdrawal patterns seem to be worse (with prescription drugs) than what we were seeing with heroin.”

Note from CCHR Int: To see for yourself what psychiatric drug reactions for infants and babies have been reported to the U.S. FDA’s medwatch system (by doctors, pharmacists, consumers etc),  go to our decrypted Medwatch reports: Under the drop down menu for DRUG NAME/DRUG CLASS, scroll all the way down to the bottom until you see CLASS OF DRUGS such as ATYPICAL ANTIPSYCHOTICS or ANTIDEPRESSANTS or STIMULANTS and select one of those.   In the AGE RANGE drop down menu select 0-1 year old then click GENERATE REPORT.   You can do this for each class of psychiatric drug.  And consider this,   by the FDA’s own admission, only 1-10% of side effects are ever reported, so the actual side effects occurring in the general population are much higher.

Click here for Decrypted Medwatch Reports http://www.cchrint.org/psychdrugdangers/medwatch_psych_drug_adverse_reactions.php

Click her to read the rest of the article:  http://www.tampabay.com/news/health/article1109348.ece

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Prescription Pill-Popping By Far a Leading Killer as Florida’s Drug Deaths Spike 20%

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

FlaglerLive.Com
July 1, 2010

Oxycodone, the addictive prescription pain-killer also known by its Purdue Pharma brand name OxyContin, directly caused more deaths in Florida in 2009 than cocaine, heroin and morphine combined. Prescription drugs as a whole are killing far more Floridians than illegal drugs, with some 8,600 deaths last year involving at least one prescription drug, according to an annual report released today by the Florida Medical Examiners Commission.

That’s 5 percent of all deaths in Florida in 2009, when 171,300 people died in the state.

The number of people killed by prescription drugs is a significant 20 percent increase over last year’s 6,200 deaths attributed to overdoses. Much of the increase is due to a spike in oxycodone addiction. The increase in prescription-drug addiction continues a trend that began in Florida 10 years ago, when prescription drugs overtook illegal drugs as leading causes of drug-related deaths.

Alcohol is also included in the examiners’ analysis, and it leads the way of all drug-related deaths, with 4,046.

The annual report is a stark look at the effects of legalized drug addiction and over-prescription of drugs, both of which affect a far larger segment of the population than recreational or illegal narcotics.

For the first time in 2009, the commission tracked deaths by region. In Flagler County’s district, which includes St. Johns and Putnam counties, 22 deaths were attributed to oxycodone (the fourth lowest number in the state’s 23 districts), with 13 of those deaths directly attributed to the drug, and nine cited as being present among other drugs that contributed to death.

Hydrocodone claimed 16 lives in the district. Cocaine contributed to 19 deaths in the Flagler district, though only four cases were directly attributed to the drug. In 15 cases, cocaine was present in the body in conjunction with other drugs that proved lethal. Overall in Florida, cocaine-related deaths (including the majority of cases where cocaine wasn’t directly the factor but was present in the body at the time of death), have fallen from a peak of 2,179 in 2007 to 1,462 in 2009. (Again, cocaine was the direct result of death in 529 cases out of those).

Ken Kramer, a researcher with the Citizens Commission on Human Rights of Florida, says the numbers underestimate the extent of the problem, because medical examiners do not track deaths attributed to antipsychotic drugs or to antidepressants, both of which carry black-box or black-label warnings. The warnings on antidepressants, required by the Food and Drug Administration, state that the drugs increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in children, adolescents and young adults up to age 24. (Antidepressants include Paxil, Prozac, Zoloft, Effexor, Lexapro and Celexa.)

Anti-psychotic drugs carry a variety of black label warnings of increased mortality in elderly patients (including a death rate almost twice as high for people taking Risperdal, for example). Those drugs, prescribed and often overprescribed in nursing homes and assisted living facilities, include Abilify, Clozaril, Geodon, Risperdal, Seroquel and Zyprexa.

“Certainly, the actual number of prescription drug deaths is higher than the annual report states,” Kramer said. “It is unknown just how much higher because the Medical Examiners Commission does not track these classes of drugs.”

Two years ago Kramer got his concern heard by the commission following an email exchange with a commissioner in which he argued that antidepressants and anti-psychotic drugs’ contributions to mortality should be part of the annual report. He was rebuffed. One examiner vsaid he had not seen “more than the occasional death caused by these types of drugs,” according to the minutes of the Aug. 13, 2008 meeting of the commission.

Read entire article:  http://flaglerlive.com/7256/florida-prescription-drugs-deaths-oxycontin-oxycodone

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Our Drug-Obsessed Nation: Obsessed with ‘feeling good’ & ‘forgetting our problems’—prescription drug abuse skyrockets

Monday, June 21st, 2010

Tech Jackal
June 19, 2010

Not many people would be surprised to find that drug abuse is on the increase, but they may be surprised to find that the increase is not in illegal drug abuse but pharmaceutical drug abuse.

Emergency room visits have increased 110% over the last 5 years, due to prescription drug abuse. These visits are either for overdoses or excuses to get drugs refilled. Ten years ago, emergency room visits were for heroine abuse and other illegal drugs. Today, these visits are for Oxycodone, Hydrocodone and Hydrocodone abuse. There are also many other prescription drugs, such as antidepressants, and anti-anxiety drugs.

Today, it is a popular practice for children in high school and college to take prescription drugs to help them study and focus. Some of these prescriptions are for Addeall and Xanax. Some young people are having teeth pulled and wisdom teeth extracted just so they can get a pain prescription.

Read entire article: http://www.techjackal.net/other/2010/06/19/why-are-we-a-drug-obsessed-nation/

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Time Magazine—ADHD Checklist Too Easy to Fake (Note to Time: that’s because it’s not a real medical disease. Get it?)

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

TIME Magazine
By Megan Gibson
June 15, 2010

It turns out you don’t need to have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in order to get the prescription drugs that treat it – you just have to know how to fake it.

A new study released in the journal Psychological Assessment has found that the initial self-report checklists used for ADHD diagnoses are actually quite easily faked by anyone who has a basic knowledge of the disorder.

Since Adderall and Ritalin abuse is quite common on college campuses and kids these days are quite adept at Googling things, this poses a problem for medical professionals. And while the study did show that follow-up tests were a bit more successful at weeding out feigned cases, they still weren’t hacker-proof.

Read entire article:  http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/06/15/study-faking-adhd-is-easy-so-is-getting-adhd-drugs/

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Freedom of Information Act request made to Pentagon officials regarding alarming drug overdoses in our armed forces

Monday, June 7th, 2010

Air Force Times
By Andrew Tilghman and Brendan McGarry
June 6, 2010

Prescription drug cocktails have lead to at least 32 accidental overdoses among Marines and soldiers since 2007, bringing military medical practices for treating physical and psychiatric problems under scrutiny.

At least 30 soldiers and two Marines overdosed while under the care of Army Warrior Transition Units or the Marine Corps Wounded Warrior Regiment, created three years ago to tightly focus care and attention on troops suffering from injuries as a result of combat.

Most of the troops had been prescribed “drug cocktails,” combinations of drugs including painkillers, sleeping pills, antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs, interviews and records show. In all cases, suicide was ruled out.

Army officials say the deaths are often complicated by troops mixing medications with alcohol, taking their own medications incorrectly or without a prescription.

It is unclear how many troops across the entire military have died from drug toxicity. Pentagon officials have not provided information about accidental drug deaths across the military despite a Military Times Freedom of Information Act request submitted nearly two months ago. Data on military deaths is compiled by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and maintained at the Pentagon’s Defense Manpower Data Center.

The Army deaths have shocked that service’s medical community and prompted an internal review. But despite a “safety stand down” in January 2009, the number of fatalities continued to rise last year — to 15 in 2009, up from 11 the year before. Meanwhile the total number of soldiers assigned to the 29 WTUs nationwide dropped from about 12,000 to about 9,000.

The internal review found the biggest risk factor may be putting a soldier on numerous drugs simultaneously, a practice known as polypharmacy. According to an Army analysis from June 2009, about 9 percent of WTU patients — 800 soldiers — were prescribed a combination of drugs that included pain, psychiatric and sleep medications.

As a result, the Army medical community has begun to question the widespread practice of polypharmacy and has quietly overhauled the way it prescribes, distributes and monitors the riskiest drugs.

Read entire article:  http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2010/06/military_drug_deaths_060710w/

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Its Not Just Celebrities Overdosing on Prescription Drugs—Its Happening Nationwide

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010

Reuters
By Megan Brooks
April 6, 2010

More and more Americans are landing in the hospital due to poisoning by powerful prescription painkillers, sedatives and tranquilizers, according to a report released today. City-living middle-aged women seem particularly vulnerable.

“People have seen the headlines related to Heath Ledger, Michael Jackson, Anna Nicole Smith and they think that’s tragic but maybe contained to Hollywood,” Dr. Jeffrey H. Coben of West Virginia University School of Medicine in Morgantown told Reuters Health.

“But the fact of the matter is we are seeing, across the country, very significant increases in serious overdoses associated with these prescription drugs,” Coben warned.

Between 1999 and 2006, US hospital admissions due to poisoning by prescription opioids, sedatives and tranquilizers rose from approximately 43,000 to about 71,000.

That increase of 65 percent is about double the increase observed in hospitalizations for poisoning by other drugs and medicines, Coben and colleagues found.

Opioids — examples include morphine, methadone, OxyContin and the active ingredient in Percocet — are powerful narcotic painkillers that can be habit-forming. Some examples of sedatives or tranquilizers include Valium, Xanax, and Ativan.

Read entire article:  http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6350MR20100406

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