Prescribed Drugs: Effective & Safe?…Or Dangerous?

We all know how powerful and influential the pharmaceutical companies are worldwide. Often the question is asked whether enough research is being conducted to find out whether the drugs worth billions of rupees being consumed by the trusting public are safe and effective. The recent findings by government officials and a top medical institution has raised serious doubts on this score.

Allergy to medicines ‘is killing thousands’, is the heading of a news story in The Times of London. “Nearly 3,000 patients have died in the past three years as a result of taking medicines intended to help them, official figures show. Thousands more have been hospitalised after suffering harmful side-effects or serious allergic reactions to prescription drugs and other medications.

“Almost half of the deaths occurred last year, while the number of reported adverse drug reactions has increased by 45 per cent over a decade. Growing numbers of patients taking aspirin and other medications for chronic illness such as heart disease could be fuelling the trend, experts suggest.

“Drugs most commonly implicated in adverse reactions include low-dose aspirin, diuretics, the anticoagulant drug warfarin and other nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs.

“Approximately 20,000 reports of adverse drug reactions are made to the (Britain’s) Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency and Commission for Human Medicines every year through a spontaneous reporting system known as the ‘yellow card’ scheme. But Dawn Primarolo, the Minister for Public Health, admitted that the yellow card scheme ‘is associated with an unknown level of underreporting’.”

In another news story with a heading ‘We’re dying for a better drugs test’ by Anjana Ahuja’, “There is a way of testing new medicines that allows inferior drugs to come on to the market. I don’t mean inferior in the sense that the drug doesn’t help as many people as an existing medicine; I mean that it can be linked with more deaths than an existing medication, and still be approved.

“An excellent paper in The Lancet recently explained how non-inferiority trials work, why they are unethical and why they should be banned. I relay its contents because it is quite possible that you are taking a pill that has travelled this dubious route from laboratory to medicine cabinet.”

So think before you pop a pill in your mouth. I wonder why no one discusses alternative medicine, or does research on it, despite claims that dramatic cures/healings are being achieved…