|
HAZARDS OF "MODERN
MEDICINE
Iatorgenic illness—disease produced as a result of medical
treatment—is now recognized as a health hazard of global proportions. MEDLINE
(the computerized medical research database of the United States National
Library of Medicine) includes over 7,000 articles, reports, and scientific
research papers since 1966 that show a substantial number of patients suffer
treatment-caused disorders and adverse drug reactions. These harmful effects,
which can be serious and even lethal, are associated with every facet of modern
medicine including drugs, other medical therapies, diagnostic procedures, and
surgery.
Massive Detrimental Effects
Detrimental effects have become so extensive as to prompt the
use of the term “iatroepidemic”. Reporting in the Journal of the American
Medical Association, Dr. Lucien Leape of Harvard School of Public Health, has
calculated that “180,000 people die in the U.S. each year partly as a result
of iatrogenic injury, the equivalent of three jumbo-jet crashes every two days”.
The journal of the American Medical Association points out that injury from
medical treatment in the U.S. “dwarfs the annual automobile accident mortality
of 45,000 and accounts for more deaths than all other accidents combined”.
An Economic Drain
Medication-caused disorders produce a substantial economic
drain. For example, the Archives of Internal Medicine reported a cost to the
U.S. economy of $76 billion in 1995. This amount is nearly twice that spent on
diabetes treatment and near the amount for cardiovascular disease.
Hazardous Hospital
Environment
The hospital environment is especially conducive to medical
hazards. Studies including those conducted at Harvard Medical School show that
as many as 36 per cent of patients admitted to hospitals suffered iatrogenic
injury with up to 25% of those being serious or fatal. Up to half of these
injuries were related to the use of medication.
The results of an analysis of cardiac arrests at a teaching
hospital found that 64 per cent were preventable. Inappropriate use of drugs was
the leading cause.
Every medication, including those that are sold over the
counter without a prescription, has an associated side effect.
Poisonous Drugs
Many drugs have side effects serious enough to cause a
secondary disease warranting its own intensive therapy. An example is
Parkinsonism caused by the neurological side effects of anti-depressants or
anti-psychotic medication. A Harvard Medical School study showed that drugs were
the real cause of the original symptoms in 37 per cent of elderly patients who
were treated for Parkinson’s disease.
Unnecessary Surgery Epidemic
A U.S. Congress Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
into Unnecessary Surgery found that in one year, there were approximately two
million unnecessary operations responsible for more than 12,000 deaths, with an
approximate cost wastage of $10 billion.
Injurious
Technologies.....
36 per cent of iatrogenic problems in intensive care units
were associated with equipment malfunction.
Unreliable Medical Care
The editor of the British Medical Journal revealed that only
15 per cent of all medical therapies have a scientific basis or have been
demonstrated to be effective. An example is the formerly common use of
irradiation for enlargement of the thymus in infancy, a condition now recognized
to be normal. This treatment has recently been shown to cause cancer in later
life in those who received it.
Pushing Poisonous Drugs
Pharmaceutical marketing also puts great pressure on
physicians to use new products. The medical journal Hospital Practice pointed
out that pharmaceutical company competition “leads to very aggressive
promotion and inundation of the physician with data supporting the use of each
new drug”. Such marketing may dilute opposing scientific information that is
not as well publicized. Ultimately drugs may be withdrawn, but only after
substantial harm has been done. For example, benoxaprofen, a non-steroidal
anti-inflammatory agent (NSAID) was introduced and heavily marketed in 1982, but
then withdrawn after cases of fatal liver toxicity were reported in Great
Britain.
Developing countries, which have less stringent controls and
means of surveillance, have had special problems with irrational drug marketing
by multinational and indigenous pharmaceutical companies that have been
carefully documented. These practices have been reviewed in the Journal of
Clinical Epidemiology by several authors.
Urgent Need For New
Knowledge
Physicians and patients have come to accept medical hazards
as a necessary price to pay for modern diagnosis and therapy even though they
may be seriously debilitating or lethal. The same is true with medical errors.
Studies have shown errors to be so pervasive that mistakes are considered to be
an inevitable part of the medical system, giving rise to the term ”necessary
fallibility”. The deplorable acceptance of disease or medical error as a
consequence of treatment reflects a deviation from the most primary principle of
medical ethics— primun non nocere—above all do no harm. The wealth of data
documenting the serious nature and extent of the hazards associated with modern
medicine has made clear that fundamental deficiencies exist in the current
medical approach and that new knowledge is urgently needed to effectively
address this problem.
For a detailed report on “the Hazards of Modern Medicine”
which includes the references from which this data was compiled please contact
Opnet International at (868) 657-2682
| 
