200,000 Americans Killed Every Year by Prescription Drugs

[peace2011]

Prescription drugs kill some 200,000 Americans every year. Will that number go up, now that most clinical trials are conducted overseas—on sick Russians, homeless Poles, and slum-dwelling Chinese—in places where regulation is virtually nonexistent, the F.D.A. doesn’t reach, and “mistakes” can end up in pauper’s graves? The authors investigate the globalization of the pharmaceutical industry, and the U.S. Government’s failure to rein in a lethal profit machine.

Deadly Medicine | Politics | Vanity Fair

Death by Medicine

I have also read that Americans take about 80% of psycotic drugs in the world. Are americans weak? hypochondriacs?

Americans take 80 percent of all prescription painkillers taken in the world.

 

[uscitizen]

It is a good thing we are not importing cheaper drugs from abroad.

 

[Seawytch]

So Prescription drugs kill people...alert the press.

Thanks to the recent ruling by the right wing tilting SCOTUS, you can't sue the makers of generic drugs that fail to tell you the dangers of their products either. Ain't that grand?

 

[strollingbones]

but lets blame high costs on the people who sue this frauds...that is easier for people than realizing how dangerous 'approved' druges are

 

[editec]

I don't take any pills and I'm an aging American.

I am constantly astounded by how many different drugs people my age seem to be taking on advice of their doctors.

Either I was blessed with a remarkably heathy body, or the average American is being seriously over proscribed.

But I do have a theory based on what happened to me once when I'd pulled a muscle in my back.

I went to the ER because the pain was awful and just want to be sure the damage wasn't something serious and permanent.

AFter they xrayed me they told me there was no structural damage and that I'd pilled some mucles.

Then they gave me a script for OXI for the pain.

Had I taken those drugs as proscribed, I'd have been kicking my new OXI addiction when that script (for 20 hits?!?! PRN!!!) ran out.

Here in Maine (home of the Whitest and one of the poorest populations in America, incidently) the NUMBER ONE DRUG PROBLEM IS LEGALLY PROSCRIBED PAINKILLERS.

 

[waltky]

Drug-dependent babies need cuddlers...

Jump in drug-dependent babies a worrying trend
Tue, May 14, 2013 - He is less than two weeks old, but he has the telltale signs of a baby in pain: a sore on his chin where he has rubbed the skin raw, along with a scratch on his cheek. He suffers from so many tremors that nurses watch him around the clock in case he starts seizing, or stops breathing.

The baby is one of many infants born dependent on drugs. He is being treated at East Tennessee Children’s Hospital in Knoxville, where doctors and nurses are on the front lines fighting the nation’s prescription drug epidemic. Drug abuse in the state is ranked among the nation’s highest, according to some estimates. The hospital expects to treat 320 children this year for drug dependence, known as neonatal abstinence syndrome — up from 33 in 2008. Last year, the hospital treated 283. “It blew us away,” Andrew Pressnell, a nurse at the unit, said of the dramatic increase. “We didn’t know what to do.” States across the US have passed laws to crack down on prescription drug abuse, including in the poor, mountainous Appalachian region, where the drugs were easily available as they flowed north from so-called “pill mills” in Florida.

The US government does not track the number of babies born dependent on drugs. A study published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that more than 13,000 infants were affected across the US in 2009. Tennessee is the first state to track the number of babies born dependent on prescription drugs, said Stephen Patrick, a neonatologist at the University of Michigan and one of the authors of the study. The preferred way to treat drug-dependent babies at the Tennessee hospital is by giving them small doses of an opiate and gradually weaning them off, said John Buchheit, who heads the neonatology unit. So every few hours, the staff will give the infants morphine to help them get their symptoms of withdrawal under control. They will be weaned off over a period of either days or weeks, he said. “The problem is the side-effects of morphine,” Buchheit said. “The one we worry about — the biggie — is that it can cause you to stop breathing.”

Roughly half of the neonatal unit’s 49 infants are being treated for drug dependence. For those infants, the pain can be excruciating. The doctors and nurses who treat them say the babies can suffer from nausea, vomiting, severe stomach cramps and diarrhea. “Diarrhea so bad that their bottoms will turn red like somebody has dipped them in scalding water and blistered and bled,” said Carla Saunders, a neonatal nurse practitioner who helps coordinate the treatment at the hospital. They have trouble eating, sleeping and in the worst cases suffer from seizures. Many suffer from skin conditions and tremors. And they are inconsolable. A small army of volunteers called “cuddlers” help the staff by holding the infants, rocking them and helping them ride out their symptoms.

Bob Woodruff, one of the 57 cuddlers for the hospital, gently rocks Liam, a 10-day-old infant who was born drug-dependent. The 71-year-old retired professor moves from room to room, wherever he is needed. It is impossible to be unmoved by these infants, Saunders said. “If there is anything that could drive the people in our society to stop turning their heads [away] to adult addiction, it’s going to be the babies,” she said. Part of the solution to drug--addicted babies is better education. Tennessee Department of Health Commissioner John Dreyzehner is part of a group lobbying the US Food and Drug Administration to put a warning on prescription drug bottles of the dangers of taking drugs while pregnant.

Jump in drug-dependent babies a worrying trend - Taipei Times

 

[whitehall]

In the last couple of years the ad agency people have been promoting prescription drugs in the media but (thank God) they are forced to include the "side effects" of the drug they are hawking to cure the latest pet disease. Watch out for the words "fatal episodes have been reported". For the low information group, you are allowed only one fatal episode.

 

[Mr. H.]

Have you or someone you know died from...
LOL just love hearing that one on TV