If you are receiving treatment for an existing disease and you develop new symptoms then, until proved otherwise, you should assume that the new symptoms are caused by the treatment you are receiving
1
Doctors are notoriously reluctant to admit that the treatments they recommend can do harm. There are several reasons for this. First, they often simply don’t know how dangerous drugs can be (doctors rarely bother to read drug company information sheets). Second, they are frightened of being sued. (Doctors fear that if they admit that their treatment made someone ill they will receive a letter from a lawyer.) And finally, there is a natural human unwillingness to admit responsibility for something that has gone wrong. This brand of unwillingness is unusually well-developed among doctors who are encouraged to think of themselves as godlike by many of their other more passive patients. Admitting to having made someone ill reminds doctors that they are mortal and fallible.
Because doctors almost never admit that the drugs they have prescribed might have caused unpleasant or dangerous side effects, very few incidences of drug-induced illness are reported to the official watchdogs which exist to measure and assess drug side effects. This enables doctors and drug companies to claim that prescription drugs are safe. (The word ‘safe’ is, of course, relative. Even though the number of reported side effects is absurdly low, doctors are now officially one of the main causes of death and serious injury in the world. They share the top four spots with cancer, heart disease and stroke. Some reports suggest that doctors are now top of the list.)
2
Side effects are far commoner than most people (including doctors) think. Four out of every ten patients who take a prescription drug will develop side effects. Some side effects will be mild and others will be unpleasant but many will be dangerous and potentially life-threatening.
3
Drug side effects can (and usually do) cause problems when you least expect them. None of us is immune. And both doctors and patients are usually far too slow to consider drug side effects when they are looking for a cause for new symptoms. We are all likely to forget or under-estimate the danger.
After I damaged my shoulder joint I started taking soluble aspirin to reduce the inflammation.
On a trip to France I started using a local variety of soluble aspirin. It dissolved much more speedily than the English variety.
My shoulder was improving nicely.
But then I developed another, quite separate problem. I started getting severe muscle pain in my left calf.
Donna Antoinette, my wife, asked if it could be due to the aspirin. I dismissed her fears. I was taking only a small dose of aspirin — and had been taking the same dose for some time without trouble.
Because the pain had started while I was walking my first fear was that it was intermittent claudication — indicative of a blocked artery in my leg. But my pulse was good so I wondered if I could have a deep vein thrombosis. It seemed extremely unlikely since aspirin is a good anti-clotting drug. I compared my painful calf with my other one using my tie as a substitute for the tape measure I didn’t have. The painful calf wasn’t swollen. Besides, the pain was too much like a cramp. (Being a doctor can be a bit of a nuisance at times.)
That night I hardly slept. I was close to calling for an ambulance.
What could cause such severe muscle cramps?
And then it occurred to me that a metabolic alkalosis is another possible cause of cramps.
Why could I be suffering from a sudden alkalosis?
My wife was still quietly and politely wondering about the aspirin.
I checked the packet. And discovered that in addition to the aspirin the tablets contained sodium bicarbonate. The bicarbonate was there to help the tablets dissolve quickly. And even though I was on a low dose there was enough sodium bicarbonate to cause the alkalosis. And the cramps.
I stopped the aspirin. And a day later the cramps disappeared. This embarrassing story reinforces Coleman’s 1st Law of Medicine which states that if you have a health problem which requires treatment and you acquire new symptoms then the new symptoms are probably caused by the treatment you’re taking.
Side effects are a major cause of illness today. And it isn’t just the main constituent of a drug which can cause problems.
4
It is worth remembering that reactions to prescription and over-the-counter medications kill far more people annually than all illegal drug use combined.’
5
The incidence of drug side effects would not matter so much if all prescriptions were necessary and life-saving. But they aren’t. On the contrary most prescriptions are unnecessary. There are hugely profitable prescription drugs on the market which have saved no lives at all but which have killed thousands.
6
The power of the drug companies is vast. In America the drug industry is represented by an army of full time political lobbyists — including former members of Congress. Drug companies contribute millions to federal election campaigns and spend billions of dollars a year handing out drug samples and employing drug pushers (known as sales representatives) to influence doctors to prescribe specifically branded drugs. In just about every Westernised country in the world doctors receive most of their official (and, therefore, theoretically independent) post graduate education through meetings (sponsored by drug companies) and journals (which rely heavily on drug company advertising). You will not be surprised to read that drug companies do not spend a good deal of time or effort warning doctors about drug side effects.
7
The drug industry does not exist to find or make cures or treatments for people. It does not exist to help people. It does not exist to save lives. It exists solely to make money. Doctors must know this. But as a profession they are, nevertheless, married to the industry and their actions suggest that many doctors regard their primary loyalty as being to the drug industry rather than to their patients. Doctors are encouraged to be loyal to the pharmaceutical industry by governments which consistently bow to drug company demands. As I explained in previous books (notably Toxic Stress) our world is now controlled not by the needs of individuals but by the needs of corporations. And naturally corporations (and institutions, associations and governments) are not restrained by ethical considerations. Drug companies don’t have hearts or consciences. They want to sell you drugs. The company doesn’t give a fig whether the drug makes you ill or kills you. The company just wants your money.
8
Most doctors learn next to nothing about drugs while at medical school. And after qualification most of the training a doctor receives is paid for by drug companies. It is safest to assume that most doctors know little about the drugs they prescribe; and that the little they know they learn from the companies that make those drugs.
9
If given a choice between an old treatment and a new treatment you should always choose the old treatment. New drugs are more dangerous than old ones. Drug side effects only appear after time. The big advantage of a drug that has been around for years is that it is unlikely to be the world’s most dangerous drug. The longer a treatment has been around the more will be known about it. You should only take a new and untested drug when you have tried all the old and tested drugs and they haven’t worked.
10
Many huge-selling drugs are launched on the basis of trials involving relatively few people. So, for example, consider a trial which involves 100 patients. If just one in 1,000 people who take the drug dies from it the chances are high that the trial of 100 patients will show nothing amiss. But if the drug is then assumed to be safe and prescribed for 10,000,000 people worldwide (a highly likely occurrence) it means that 10,000 people will die as a result of taking the drug. This sort of carnage is probably acceptable if the drug is life-saving and is only prescribed for patients who might otherwise die. But if the drug is prescribed for something which is not life-threatening (such as hay-fever) then all those deaths are entirely unnecessary.
11
A 13-year-old child weighing 6 stone will probably receive the same dose of medication as a 45-year-old man weighing 20 stone. The same medicines (often in the same doses) are prescribed for young and old, male and female, fat and thin. This is bizarre, illogical and indefensible. No one bothers to do any research into how much of a drug should be given to which type of patient. Why should they? The vast majority of drug research is done by, or on behalf of, drug companies. Adjusting doses to suit particular patients is of no interest to them. All they want to do is sell drugs. And so everyone (young or old, small or big) gets the biggest dose the drug company can sell.
12
Never take a new drug if you are alone in the house. If you are alone and you have an anaphylactic shock reaction you could die. Anaphylactic shock reactions are commoner than most people imagine. The number of people suffering from potentially life-threatening allergic reactions has increased by more than 300% in a decade and, for example, in one recent year around 30,000 people in the United Kingdom (UK) had anaphylactic shock reactions). Anaphylactic shock reactions can and do kill. If there is someone else with you there will be someone able to ring for a doctor and an ambulance. In medicine the word new when used to describe a drug means two things: the drug is expensive and no one yet knows whether it will cure you or kill you.
13
Doctors have no idea how long to give drugs for. When prescribing antibiotics, for example, one doctor will hand out a prescription for five days, a second will write a prescription for seven days, a third will dispense a ten day supply and a fourth will give a prescription for fourteen days. All for the same patient with the same symptoms. Only the most bigoted member of the medical establishment would dare to describe medicine as a science.
14
A friend of mine had labyrinthitis for which his doctor prescribed a drug called prochlorperazine. Within hours my friend had developed bad dizziness when sitting up and a new symptom: ataxia. (He had difficulty in controlling body movements.) He telephoned the doctor and reported what had happened. The doctor immediately changed his diagnosis and told my friend that he might have a brain tumour. He increased the dose of the prochlorperazine and said he would arrange for a brain scan to be performed. When the dizziness and the ataxia got worse my friend’s wife telephoned me to tell me what was happening. She was, not surprisingly, in tears.
‘He’s on prochlorperazine?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘But it doesn’t seem to be helping.’
‘Stop it,’ I told her. ‘Stop the prochlorperazine and I think he’ll be better.’
They stopped the prochlorperazine.
The dizziness on sitting up and the ataxia were gone within hours.
Both symptoms are possible side effects of prochlorperazine.
15
Aspirin is one of the safest and most tested drugs in the world but it is also out of patent and very cheap to make and to buy. So wonderfully idiotic rules have been introduced in many countries making it impossible to buy aspirin in anything other than very small quantities. So, for example, if you want to buy aspirin to treat your arthritis you may find that you can only buy tablets in packs of twelve. This means that the average arthritis sufferer will have to visit the chemist almost daily. Inevitably, they don’t. They visit their doctor and are given a prescription for something which is almost certainly far more expensive and probably much more dangerous.
16
When a patient is given a prescription drug there is a risk that the drug will cause a side effect. When a patient is given two drugs both can, of course, cause side effects. But there is another (usually underestimated) problem. Many drugs do not interact well. If you take two drugs then your chances of developing unpleasant or lethal side effects are far greater than the chances of developing unpleasant or lethal side effects with the two individual drugs. Taking two prescription drugs is a bit like mixing brandy and red wine. Taking three is like mixing brandy, red wine and champagne. Drug companies, which sometimes seem to me to thrive on creating illness, often make things worse by manufacturing compound drugs which actually contain two or more drugs in one tablet or capsule. The only advantage of this is that it enables them to make many people ill. And, of course, people who are ill are usually given yet more tablets.
17
Most of the clinical research published in medical journals (and used as the basis for medical practice) is (how shall I put it to be tactful) as bent as a paperclip. Authors of clinical research articles are supposed to admit to any links they have with drug companies if those links might have a direct effect on their credibility. But general links don’t count which is just as well since the vast majority of medical researchers have, at some stage in their careers, taken drug company money. Between two thirds and three quarters of the drug trials published in major medical journals are funded by drug companies. Research conducted by drug companies which shows that a drug doesn’t work or is dangerous is routinely suppressed. Sceptics about the independence of studies funded by drug companies point to the fact that research programmes paid for by drug companies are four times as likely to produce results which are favourable to the company than are studies funded from other sources. What an amazingly useful coincidence that is.
Drug companies use a number of tricks to ensure that they get the results they want. Here are some:
18
Thousands of clinical research papers are published every week. Most are of little value to anyone except the author and perhaps a drug company. Any useful ones are often lost among commercially-driven material.
19
Statutory organisations intended to protect patients are now heavily influenced by the pharmaceutical industry.
20
Many patient support organisations are funded by pharmaceutical companies, which can influence the information they provide.
21
If you take three drugs and two of them are for side effects caused by the first drug then you are probably being badly treated.
22
Never, ever trust a doctor who tells you that the drug he is prescribing is free of all side effects.
If you are receiving treatment for an existing disease and you develop new symptoms then, until proved otherwise, you should assume that the new symptoms are caused by the treatment you are receiving.
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By Independent News Roundup