an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported that an estimated 106,000 hospitalized patients die each year from drugs which, by medical standards, are properly prescribed and properly administered. More than two million suffer serious side effects. [3]
An article in Newsweek [4] put this into perspective. Adverse drug reactions, from "properly" prescribed drugs, are the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. According to this article, only heart disease, cancer, and stroke kill more Americans than drugs prescribed by medical doctors. Reactions to prescription drugs kill more than twice as many Americans as HIV/AIDS or suicide. Fewer die from accidents or diabetes than adverse drug reactions. It is important to point out the limitations of this study. It did not include outpatients, cases of malpractice, or instances where the drugs were not taken as directed.
According to another AMA publication, drug related "problems" kill as many as 198,815 people, put 8.8 million in hospitals, and account for up to 28% of hospital admissions.

100% of suicides by prescription medications use prescription medications . . .

I'm just saying

yes well those numbers were not included in this so maybe its the third leading cause of death.

also not included is the stupid doctor factor, which is doctors in hospitals who give their patients the wrong dose or wrong medication.

adhdaloha, thanks for thinking of us when you find an interesting article. It really helps if you include a link to the information so we can read and interpret for ourselves.

what proof do they have that they are "properly administered"? Unless they are glued to your side the 7 to 10 days the meds are to be administered, they really don't know what you're doing with your percocet, do they?

My own husband reads the bottle of tylenol and then decides he needs 50% more than the recommended dosage.

If you take way more than your prescribed dosage, do you willingly announce it to your doctor? People are occasionally stupid.

what proof do they have that they are "properly administered"? Unless they are glued to your side the 7 to 10 days the meds are to be administered, they really don't know what you're doing with your percocet, do they?

My own husband reads the bottle of tylenol and then decides he needs 50% more than the recommended dosage.

If you take way more than your prescribed dosage, do you willingly announce it to your doctor? People are occasionally stupid.

The information in the OP was about medications administered properly to hospitalized patients. When you add doctor and pharmacy errors, and patient misunderstanding and misuse, the numbers go up even higher.


I did a Google (because I enjoy doing that) and it looks like the information originally came from a book written by a doctor.



Did you know

The leading drug problem in the U.S. today is not the use of illegal drugs-it is the use of legal drugs.
The fourth leading cause of death in the U.S. is properly prescribed and administered medication. By adding improperly prescribed medication to that equation, it becomes the third leading cause of death.
There are over 2 million hospital admissions and 180,000 deaths each and every year in the U.S. due solely to adverse drug reactions
When the FDA approves a medication for use by the general public, less than half of the serious drug reactions are known. You-the patient-become the final clinical trial.

If you aren't aware of these facts, and you don't have the tools and information to counter them, you are at risk.

Experienced family doctor Ray Strand writes his patients prescriptions every week, but he also believes that prescribing drugs should be a last resort in most medical cases-not a first choice. In Death by Prescription he provides simple guidelines to help readers protect themselves and their families from suffering adverse reactions to prescription medication.


http://www.amazon.com/Death-Prescription-Shocking-Behind-Overmedicated/dp/0785264841

I've already rebutted this, but for the sake of completeness and those who haven't read the other thread we had this discussion in...


an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported that an estimated 106,000 hospitalized patients die each year from drugs which, by medical standards, are properly prescribed and properly administered. More than two million suffer serious side effects. [3]

An article in Newsweek [4] put this into perspective. Adverse drug reactions, from "properly" prescribed drugs, are the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. According to this article, only heart disease, cancer, and stroke kill more Americans than drugs prescribed by medical doctors. Reactions to prescription drugs kill more than twice as many Americans as HIV/AIDS or suicide. Fewer die from accidents or diabetes than adverse drug reactions. It is important to point out the limitations of this study. It did not include outpatients, cases of malpractice, or instances where the drugs were not taken as directed.

Firstly, the study is actually a meta-study of data from other studies. The data collected was from 1994, and this meta-study was performed in 1998. Secondly, while this number is high, it's important to remember that it represents 0.32% of hospitalized patients in a year. That's a third of a single percent. Thirdly, we can not conclude anything about the appropriateness or safety of pharmaceutical drugs from this study. What we can conclude is that people do in fact die from adverse reactions to drugs.

Further, the study has no way to filter for patients who were appropriate prescribed and administered a medication but suffered an adverse reaction because of a compromised condition such as a kidney or liver issue, or weakened immune system. Further, other studies* suggest that over 50% of all preventable adverse drug reaction fatalities are caused by just four drug types. Antiplatelets, diuretics, NSAIDs and anticoagulants. We already know that these types of drugs can be very dangerous, however in the situations they are prescribed for, they are often treating a serious and sometimes life-threatening condition. In other words, many if not most people who die from adverse drug reactions are already at high risk of death before they ever swallow a pill.

I can't stress this next point enough. The human race is a wildly diverse group of astonishingly complex organisms with chemical engines. There will always be a percentage of the population which does not respond favorably to a drug which the rest of the population does respond favorably to. 8 billion pharmaceutical prescriptions are written every year. Assuming that the number of adverse reactions resulting in death is similar today, say 110,000, that means the fatal failure rate of these prescriptions is 0.00001375%. That is an astonishing, amazing, impressive, and almost miraculous number.

If you are looking for a smoking gun to suggest that pharmaceutical science is a failure, I think you may want to look somewhere else. If anything, these numbers only show that pharmaceutical science is a wildly successful endeavor and possibly one of the most beneficial advancements in all of human history.

The original article you quoted but failed to provide a source for:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_9684.cfm

The AMA article:
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/279/15/1200?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=Incidence+of+adverse+drug+reactions+in+ho spitalized+patients&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT

* Which drugs cause preventable admissions to hospital?:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2000562

By the way, the good Mr. Kent is appallingly wrong. You are not more likely to die from recreational drugs than pharmaceutical drugs. He concludes that because pharmaceutical drugs lead to 110,000 deaths, and recreational drugs lead to 10,000 deaths, then since 110,000 is greater than 10,000 that death by pharmaceutical drug is more probable. Unfortunately, he fails 5th grade mathematics. Mr. Kent is not smarter than a 5th grader.

That's true blueroo. We have to look at the deaths per 1000 or something like that if the stats are going to be helpful.

Lots of people DO die from plain old prescription medications without complications or anything. I think this shows that lots of people take prescription meds rather than them being very dangerous.

How many people die because they can't get the meds. they need? I bet it's more than the deaths caused by scripted meds.

Let's put this in perspective. The chances of dying for an average American are:

Car Accident (1 in 6500)
Murder (1 in 16,500)
Falling (1 in 16,500)
Crossing the street (1 in 48,500)
Adverse Drug Interaction (1 in 72,700)
Drowning (1 in 88,000)
Fire (1 in 88,000)
Air Crash (1 in 400,000)
Lightning (1 in 6.2 Million)

http://www.reason.com/news/show/36765.html

And these are just averages for the entire American public. If you don't swim, your chances of drowning plummet to nearly zero. If you don't ride in a car, you'll never be in a car accident. If you don't take one of the four types of prescription drugs that cause the most fatal deaths, your chances of dying from an adverse drug reaction shrink drastically. Probably to the point where you are more likely to die by drowning, fire, or air crash. It might still beat out lightning though.

Frankly, I wish that Dr. Ray Strand and everyone like him would take a long walk off a short pier. They misrepresent facts to scare people, and then profit by selling their books, supplements, and "natural" drugs. That kind of behavior is morally reprehensible.

PS. You are many times more likely to fall victim to an asteroid than terrorism. Neat, huh?

Adverse Drug Interaction (1 in 72,700)


Fatal Adverse Drug Interaction from ADHD meds is very low.

http://www.ablechild.org/newsarchive/No%20Black%20Box%20Warning%200506.html

1999 to 2003, there were 25 reports of patients who died

Thats 5 years( 5 per year).

In 2005, the company found that an estimated 1.7 million adults aged 20 to 64 years and 3.3 million children aged 19 years and younger used ADHD medications in the United States.

Granted the 5 million figure here is based on 2005 not 99-03 but 5 deaths per year equates to 1 in 1,000,000 fatal cases per year.

100% of suicides by prescription medications use prescription medications . . .

I'm just saying

:confused::confused::confused::confused::confused:

Did I miss something?

I always wondered how anyone in their right mind would take an anti-inflammatory medication knowing that their heart condition put them at high risk for dangerous, even lethal, side effects from the medication. A serious injury to a joint changed my way of thinking.

Until one has experienced severe chronic pain that prevents you from getting a good night's sleep or even functioning on a basic level, you can't understand. I'm not a wimp. I managed two whole months of sleep deprivation before I asked my doctor for something stronger to manage pain. It was either that or quit earning a living. We tried three medications before we found one that actually reduced the inflammation and reduced the pain to tolerable so I could sleep at night. The one that worked was taken off the shelf only a few months after my injury.

I always wondered how anyone in their right mind would take an anti-inflammatory medication knowing that their heart condition put them at high risk for dangerous, even lethal, side effects from the medication. A serious injury to a joint changed my way of thinking.

Maybe because doctors are still prescribing NSAIDs to people with known hypertension and other heart problems? It could be that not everyone is aware of the possible reactions to anti-inflammatory meds in those who have a heart condition.


Until one has experienced severe chronic pain that prevents you from getting a good night's sleep or even functioning on a basic level, you can't understand. I'm not a wimp. I managed two whole months of sleep deprivation before I asked my doctor for something stronger to manage pain. It was either that or quit earning a living. We tried three medications before we found one that actually reduced the inflammation and reduced the pain to tolerable so I could sleep at night. The one that worked was taken off the shelf only a few months after my injury.

Sleep deprivation is the worst. Between chronic pain and an oversensitivity to noise combined with trying to sleep with a person who snored, I spent many years in a sleep deprived mode. Amazing how much kicking the snorer out of the house (for other reasons of course) improved my chronic pain, or perhaps just my tolerance.

I hope your pain is better these days.

:confused::confused::confused::confused::confused:

Did I miss something?
newfdog, I think he was referring to statistics in general. You can make them say anything.

For example: Did you know that 100% of people who die each year have drunk water?

See wikipedia entry on statistics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics).



Firstly, the study is actually a meta-study of data from other studies. The data collected was from 1994, and this meta-study was performed in 1998. Secondly, while this number is high, it's important to remember that it represents 0.32% of hospitalized patients in a year.
That's right. When quoting statistics, it's very important to define the context. Unfortunately the media rarely does this, which is why we get into these situations of having to defend our position, (we == ADDers).

Average life spans have roughly _doubled_ over the last 160 years in industrialised societies. Check it out...

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol296/issue5570/images/data/1029/DC1/1069675S2_thumb.gif

All that dreadful modern medical science is to blame, apparently...

(Above graph from http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/296/5570/1029/DC1 if you are interested in the full article)

:confused::confused::confused::confused::confused:

Did I miss something?

lol, no, I just regularly don't make sense!