The Evidence The Drug Makers Don't Talk About
- From: "PeterB" <pkm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 31 Aug 2006 06:37:39 -0700
Recently, a PR grunt operating on behalf of the drug makers posted a
collection of Poison Control data based on information collected in
TESS (Toxic Exposure Surveillance System.) Her objective was to show
the dangers of dietary supplements, but what she showed instead was the
remarkable safety record of these products, and the fact that
prescription and OTC drugs are orders of magnitude more dangerous by
comparison. She never responded to my critique of her "analysis," even
after promising to do so over a period of months. It's important to
understand the facts as a consumer because if something is hazardous to
your health, you want to know about it. Let's review what Poison
Control in Washington DC had to say when I interviewed them last year.
TESS does not collect epidemiological medical data, it collects and
catalogs poison control reports. I contacted Poison Control and
interviewed a specialist to be sure I understood the process. Here is
what I learned. When a person contacts Poison Control, the caller is
surveyed with a few simple questions and a report documenting the call
is created. Naturally, anything ingested within 24 hours prior to the
adverse medical event is recorded. If more than one item is indicated,
for instance aspirin and ginseng, both are catalogued. Now things get
tricky. Only one of these products will be given greater weight as a
"probable" cause of illness in the report. What is the criteria for
"probable" cause? In most cases, since a caller does not seek medical
care, a medical examination never occurs. This is important because it
means that in the great majority of cases, roughly 70%, individuals are
never subject to any type of toxicology at all. In the absence of such
forensics, "probable cause" is just someone's best guess. It is here
that Poison Control introduces an unfortunate bias into the reporting
protocol. When an OTC or prescription drug is taken in addition to an
herbal by a poison victim, though it can't be known whether the adverse
event results from a chemical reaction between them, if that is
suspected, the tally stroke is applied to the herbal if the drug is
doctor prescribed. Read that again. It means that a prescription drug
under such conditions is assumed to be unrelated to the reported
medical event, even if the drug has been associated with such medical
events in the medical literature. In light of such bias, the following
statistics are all the more remarkable. According to Poison Control,
only 2.4% of all human poisoning in the US is associated with the
entire spectrum of dietary supplements. By contrast, 11.4% of all
poisonings are associated with just **ONE** class of pharmaceutical
drug -- analgesics. A similar breakout for the majority of prescription
drugs, including depressants, anti-depressants, antibiotics, beta
blockers, blood thinners, statins, cytotoxics, anorectics, and other
drug classes, was not provided, but we can see that any disparity
between the two classes of product in terms of safety are probably even
wider than suspected.
How can we catalog reports related to either drug or dietary supplement
poisoning? The largest subgroup are those individuals experiencing a
complication despite having taken the proper dosage. This group will
include those who experience a potentially serious allergic reaction
that may be fatal or cause organ damage. Another subgroup are children
who become victims by accidental exposure, whereas children represent
at least 50% of all reported poisonings. Very few accidental
poisonings in children are related to a dietary supplement, and fewer
still (in that category) are fatal. The last group is a set of
mortalities resulting from suicide. Autopsy will usually settle the
question in such cases, and it should come as no suprise that
prescription and OTC drugs are frequently the method of choice. By
contrast, the great majority of dietary supplements are so safe that
downing an entire bottle still won't be enough to kill you. The data
shows clearly that pharmaceutical drugs are several orders of magnitude
more dangerous than dietary supplements, and that regulatory oversight
by FDA is largely ineffective. Any call for greater regulation of
dietary supplements by FDA is therefore disengenuous.
In summary, the fact that many millions of dietary supplements are
consumed each and every day with only a handful of mortalities
*potentially associated with them* is quite astonishing. Unless you
ignore the medical literature, death by bee sting (estimated at 100
deaths per year -- a little piece of data quite difficult to nail
down!) is a more serious threat to the public health than products
purchased at a health food store. If the drug industry had a record
like this, the FDA would have closed its doors long ago, saving the
taxpayer many billions of dollars, not to mention saving millions of
lives.
PeterB
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