Originally published April 27 2005
Americans take more pills than any other country on earth
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Even while 125,000 Americans every year from mistakes in prescriptions and drug interactions -- now the fourth leading cause of death in the US -- the country is popping more pills than ever, creating new concerns for long-term health and wealth. In fact, Americans take more pills than any other nation on earth and the numbers are rising. Unfortunately, people generally do not understand that drugs are, at their root, poisons. They are designed to create controlled chemical changes in the body, but their interactions with the body are sometimes unpredictable, especially in the presence of other drugs. Thus, the increased use of prescriptions drugs may be doing more harm than good.
Americans buy much more medicine per person than any other country.
The number of prescriptions has swelled by two-thirds over the past decade to 3.5 billion yearly, according to IMS Health, a pharmaceutical consulting company.
Americans devour even more nonprescription drugs, polling suggests.
Recently, safety questions have beset some depression and anti-inflammatory drugs, pushing pain relievers Vioxx and most recently Bextra from the market.
That could make pharmaceuticals the fourth-leading national cause of death after heart disease, cancer and stroke.
The pharmaceutical industry served up more than $250 billion worth of sales last year, the vast majority in prescriptions, according to industry consultants.
Alice and Ken Heckman each begin their morning by cracking open a rattling plastic tray carting scores of pills in a rainbow of pastel colors.
Though carrying some risk, other drugs such as cholesterol-cutting statins help a considerable minority dodge potential calamities like heart attack or stroke.
The right balance of risk and benefit is still harder to strike for a raft of heavily promoted drugs that treat common, persistent, daily life conditions: like anti-inflammatories, antacids, and pills for allergy, depression, shyness, premenstrual crankiness, waning sexual powers, impulsiveness in children you name it.
Heckman lost his alertness for several months to a depression medication.
Hospital patients suffer seven hard-to-foresee adverse drug reactions and another three outright drug mistakes for every 100 admissions, estimates Dr. David Bates, a researcher at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital.
The dangers potentially escalate when doctors prescribe drugs, as they often do, for uses not formally approved by the FDA.
In a recent report, the Centers for Disease Control voiced concern about huge off-label growth of antidepressants.
Other conditions have mysteriously proliferated, including asthma, diabetes and obesity.
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