Medical Errors & Death by Medical Drugs

Just google this: Death by medical error in US. This is what you get.

• Medical errors may account for as many as 251,000 deaths annually in the United States, making medical error the third leading cause of death.

• Error rates are significantly higher in the U.S. than in other developed countries such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and the United Kingdom (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28186008/).

This is the message to the world: Modern medicine kills a lot of patients due to human error! Visit this website, https://etactics.com/blog/medical-error-statistics. It says:

• Medical errors – these are preventable adverse effects resulting from medical care rather than the patient’s condition. We’d like to think they don’t happen.

• These issues aren’t new; the first major report on medical errors in the US is from over 2 decades ago. In 1999, To Err is Human from the Institution of Medicine estimated 98,000 deaths due to error. At the time, this would be the 6th leading cause of death in the country.

• A study in 2010 found that this number had almost doubled to 180,000 deaths. And by 2013, the estimate ranged from 210,000 to 440,000 deaths per year. This landed medical errors as the 3rd leading cause of death trailing heart disease and cancer.

To understand the core of the problem, here is another article, Death by Prescription (https://health.usnews.com/health-news/patient-advice/articles/2016-09-27/the-danger-in-taking-prescribed-medications).

Light, professor of comparative health policy at Rowan University School of Osteopathic Medicine in Stratford, New Jersey said:

• About 2,460 people per week are estimated to die from drugs that were properly prescribed, and that’s based on detailed chart reviews of hospitalized patients.

• The estimate, which didn’t include those who died as a result of prescribing errors, overdose and self-medication, would make taking properly prescribed drugs the 4th leading cause of death in the U.S.

Here are more examples for you to reflect on:

The Rise and Fall of Vioxx (https://www.npr.org/2007/11/10/5470430/timelinethe-rise-and-fall-of-vioxx)

• FDA approved Vioxx in 1999 as a painkiller. It was being extensively used and prescribed to patients who needed it. Vioxx was later shown to be deadly, causing heart attacks and strokes.

• November 2007: Merck announces it will pay $4.85 billion to end thousands of lawsuits over its painkiller Vioxx. The amount … is believed to be the largest drug settlement ever.

The United States is experiencing an epidemic of drug poisoning deaths (https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6450a3.htm).

• From 2000 to 2014 nearly half a million persons in the United States have died from drug overdose.

• Opioids, primarily prescription pain relievers and heroin, are the main drugs associated with overdose deaths.

You want a description of hell? Oxycontin’s 12-hour problem. (https://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin-part1/).

• Purdue developed OxyContin as a cure for pain.

• To obtain FDA approval, Purdue had to demonstrate that OxyContin was safe and was as effective as other pain drugs on the market.

• The FDA approved the application in 1995.

• Many doctors began prescribing OxyContin. Doctors wrote 5.4 million prescriptions for the painkiller in 2014. OxyContin became America’s bestselling painkiller, and Purdue reaped $31 billion in revenue.

• Rates of addiction and overdose soared alongside the rise in prescriptions.

• The U.S. Justice Dept. launched a criminal investigation, and in 2007 the company and 3 top executives pleaded guilty to fraud for downplaying OxyContin’s risk of addiction. Purdue and the executives were ordered to pay $635 million.

• The drug is widely blamed for setting off the nation’s prescription opioid epidemic, which has claimed more than 190,000 lives from overdoses involving OxyContin and other painkillers since 1999.

Many years ago, Vioxx was commonly prescribed to cancer patients. Now, this drug has disappeared from the market. What about OxyContin? That too is slowly going off the list although at times, I do know that some patients are still being prescribed with this drug.

But what came as a shock to me is Zantac, a commonly prescribed drug used to prevent and treat heartburn and other symptoms caused by too much acid in the stomach (acid indigestion). Many cancer patients suffer from this problem and they are given Zantac for the problem (even today as I am writing this article).

The chemical name of Zantac is ranitidine hydrochloride.

What is so shocking about Zantac?

Anna Edney, Susan Berfield and Jef Feeley wrote this article in Bloomberg.com on 15 February 2023

Zantac’s Maker Kept Quiet About Cancer Risks for 40 Years

(https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-15/zantac-cancer-risk-data-was-kept-quiet-by-manufacturer-glaxo-for-40-years).

According to the authors, the British drug company Glaxo said that Zantac does not cause tumours. But the company’s own scientist and independent researchers said this commonly prescribed drug can cause cancer. This fact had been suppressed or kept away from the public for 40 years!

After reading the article I asked myself – It is for real? Or is it just another fake news?

The article went on to say:

• This small British company was sometimes called Glaxo University. It conducted important pharmaceutical research that rarely resulted in profitable drugs. Then the scientists at Glaxo Laboratories created a molecule they called ranitidine
• This drug is used to heal ulcers and also used to treat heartburn. They developed ranitidine quickly, and the US Food and Drug Administration reviewed it quickly. Glaxo gave it the brand name Zantac.
• In 1978 the company was granted a US patent.
• For years, Glaxo counted on Zantac for nearly half of its sales and almost as much of its profit. Zantac created reputations and fortunes.
• In 2019 the drug was found to be tainted with high levels of a probable carcinogen called NDMA (N-Nitrosodimethylamine).
• NDMA, is a yellow liquid that dissolves in water. It doesn’t have an odor or much of a taste. It was first linked to cancer in 1956 and is most toxic to the liver. The poison is created by ranitidine itself. In 2020 the FDA forced it off the market altogether.
• From ranitidine’s beginning to its end, Glaxo had been warned by its own scientists and independent researchers about the potential danger.

• Over the years, the company backed flawed research — designed to minimize concerns … Glaxo sold a drug that might harm people, tried to discount evidence of that and never gave anyone the slightest warning.

• More than 70,000 people who took Zantac or generic versions of it are suing the company in US state courts for selling a potentially contaminated and dangerous drug.
• Every public-health agency, from the Environmental Protection Agency to the FDA to the World Health Organization, says NDMA likely causes cancer in humans. But proving that a particular person’s cancerous cells were mutated by a company’s drug is complicated. Glaxo’s decisions suggest it never wanted to consider that possibility. The clues were there. The documents show that Glaxo preferred not to find them.