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The Deadly Toll of Prescription Drugs

Created on: 2024-05-14

Modified on: 2024-08-19

Dr Peter Gøtzsche, a leading researcher and writer on medicine, recently published a paper entitled:

Prescription Drugs are the Leading Cause of Death

and psychiatric drugs are the third leading cause of death

It's a powerful text, going through different classes of drugs, studies that have been done to estimate the harms they cause, the limitations of these studies, and the reasons for Gøtzsche's own estimates. In conclusion, he writes:

"If we add the estimates . . . , 315,000 hospital deaths, 390,000 psychiatric drug deaths, 70,000 synthetic opioid deaths, and 107,000 NSAID deaths, we get 882,000 drug deaths in the United States annually. . . .

"It is difficult to know what the exact death toll of our drugs is, but there can be no doubt that they are the leading cause of death."

Dr Gøtzsche

As with so much of current affairs, this is shocking, but not shocking: terrible, but not surprising.

Since its beginnings - wherever you pin that - modern medicine has always had its critics, whether from the outside (e.g. naturopaths) or within its own ranks. One of the most celebrated papers in relatively recent years is Dr Barbara Starfield's famous 2000 study, "Is US Health Really the Best in the World?". This was published in JAMA - Journal of the American Medical Association - one of the most prestigious and orthodox medical journals. Starfield was a highly respected member of the medical orthodoxy, and a leading researcher and advocate of primary health care.

Starfield's 2000 paper concluded that US healthcare was responsible, by a conservative estimate, for 225,000 deaths per year, 106,000 of which were caused by properly prescribed drugs. Her conclusions place these iatrogenic (doctor caused) harms as the third leading cause of death in the USA. Nor were her conclusions particularly contested. Whatever the patients believed, medical doctors knew that fatal drug side effects and other medically caused deaths were part of medicine. Indeed, when she first submitted her paper to a medical journal, it was rejected on the grounds that "it would not be interesting to readers."

Dr Starfield

In a tragic irony, Starfield herself became such a statistic, dying suddenly at 78 as a result, it is believed, of her prescribed medications.

"Thus, in the USA, regular prescription drugs cause, each year, more than double the number of deaths they experienced from covid in 2020."

This is not to take anything away from Gøtzsche's recent paper. A perceived weakness of the Starfield study is that it could nowadays be argued that things must have improved in the 24 years since it was published. Gøzsche shows that that is not the case, and that the current numbers are far worse than many had previously thought.

And let the numbers sink in: 882,000 each and every year. To put them in context: according to official statistics, covid caused or contributed to a total of 350-385,000 deaths in the USA in 2020. This figure is uncertain because it also contains iatrogenic deaths, i.e. deaths caused or contributed to by dangerous drugs and other procedures that were used on covid patients, while numerous safer alternatives were actively suppressed. But even if we ignore this, and take the highest estimate at face value - that number is substantially less than half the number calculated by Gøtzsche for deaths caused by normal medicines in a normal year. Thus, at least for the USA, regular prescription drugs cause, each year, more than double the number of deaths they experienced from covid in 2020.

Realizing the magnitude of the disaster revealed in this paper, the BBC did a full week of programming about this. Only kidding, the mainstream media, including the BBC, ignored it, as usual.

"But!" you say, "surely these normal prescription drugs save more lives than they take!" Gøtzshe answers this case by case, e.g.:

"[S]ystematic reviews have shown that [NSAID's] analgesic effect is similar to that of paracetamol (acetaminophen). Yet most patients with pain are recommended to take both paracetamol and an NSAID over the counter. This will not increase the effect, only the risk of dying."

Prescribed pain control has its place, e.g. for surgery. However, many people are taking pain medications day after day, with no end in sight. This is not a rational approach to healing. Not only are many of these drugs addictive, creating a dependency, but they also, from a natural healing point of view, alter the body in other ways that increase the cause of the pain. Natural healing can resolve the causes of pain, therefore for the majority of chronic pain medication users, the risk can be avoided.

Similarly, with sleeping pills - for most insomniacs, insomnia is just an annoyance, not worth taking a risk for. However, incapacity to sleep can again be resolved by natural healing.

What about anti-depressants? Gøtzsche states that far from being safe and effective, "They double suicides in adults." What is the cause of depression? Gøtzsche states: "People are depressed because they live depressing lives, not because of some brain disorder."

With all due respect for Gøtzsche's work as a researcher within orthodox medicine, the view from natural healing is more complex. Anti-depressants have indeed been a failed medicine, that is sure.

But the cause of depression? Partly it can be depressing lives, or poor cognitive habits - which can be dealt with with psychotherapies. But for many it is indeed due to physical illness. This is proven by the fact that people have reversed their depression through natural healing, and look back and wonder why they were so depressed.

The original illness of depression can be due to toxicity, from many possible sources, including toxic effects from other prescribed drugs. Some non-psychiatric drugs are famous for causing psychological disturbances. So in this scenario, the patient is poisoned with the first drug, which causes depression, and then poisoned again by the second drug, the toxic anti-depressant.

NOTE: if you're taking anti-depressants, PLEASE do NOT just take yourself the medication: withdrawal can be problematic, and should be done under competent supervision.

Even schizophrenia is curable; we know this because it has been cured. My mentor was approached by the family of a schizophrenic, and while it was a difficult situation, the patient was eventually cured.

Thus many of the reasons for which people risk using dangerous drugs can be resolved safely through natural healing.

- Antony

Notes

: Gøtzshe, Prescription Drugs Are the Leading Cause of Death, Brownstone Institute, 16 Apr 2024

: Starfield, Is US Health Really the Best in the World?, JAMA, 26 Jul 2000

: Stafford, Obituaries: Barbara Starfield, BMJ, 6 Jul 2011

: Rappoport, Medically Caused Death in America: an Exclusive Interview with Barbara Starfield, The Matrix Revealed, No More Fake News.com, 2011

: Mercola, Medical Errors: STILL the Third Leading Cause of Death, Mercola,com, 18 May 2016

: 2020 Final Death Statistics: COVID-19 as an Underlying Cause of Death vs. Contributing Cause, CDC

: Hydroxychloroquine: Deadly Drug or Unrecognized Saviour?, Healing Truths, 30 Jul 2021

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