Do You Think Most Medicines Prescribed Are More Harmful Than They Are Helpful?

Question

I have horror stories about prescription meds and vaccines! So if Obama is our President a socialized Health care plan will force people to take medicines and vaccines? Is this a communist guy or what? DON'T GET CHICKEN POX Vaccines for your kids! My child got a skin disease from it and now they said he can get cancer by the time he is 20!

Don't let them put ANY DYES inside of you! It almost KILLED ME! Now I have a disease caused from getting a Tetnanus shot combined with cat scan die. A incureable disease! I should have SUED them but Im a vivid believer that Law Suits are destroying our country!

My sister got hormone shots now she has permanant nerve damage!

My friend took Premara drug and got Breast Cancer from it, now they say up to 250,000 women got breast cancer from THIS DRUG they did not test for the REQUIRED 5 years!!

My mom took hormone therapy when in Menopause and got cervical cancer from it!

We all know people that get the bad side effects!

Answer 1

You are SO RIGHT.  

Diabetics should NOT have insulin - if they can't deal with high blood sugar and renal failure and blindness, then that's their problem.  And hypertensive people should just be allowed to develop thick hearts so they can have heart attacks.  Don't even start with those people who have coronary artery disease... if they can't keep their own arteries clean, why should we force drugs on them that keep them alive?  

If you can't survive an infection, you really shouldn't be allowed to continue to take up space on the planet.  It's crowded enough here.  And vaccines...  if the little buggers succumb to measles or mumps or diptheria or tetanus, then they weren't really strong enough to live in the first place, right?

Oh wait, that all looks a bit ridiculous.

Temporal relationships are not necessarily causal relationships.

Be a good example for us all, and have your next surgery without anesthesia.  That's nothing but drugs, and dangerous drugs at that.

Answer 2

To answer your question do I think most medicines are more harmful than helpful, I say no.

Most drugs are more helpful than harmful, only some (to a small percentage of the population) are doing more harm than good.

EG

Antibiotics since their discovery by Fleming have saved millions of lives possibly billions.

Pain relievers; can you imagine life without them.

Vaccines, without these every winter would bring about an apocalypse.

Antimalarials, antivirals, asthma puffers for asthmatics, antiepileptics and do not forget the heart medicines.

Though they may have terrible RARE side-effects they prolong and save many lives.

So over all do I think medicines do more harm than good, my answer is No.

Answer 3

I'm alive today because antibiotics and vaccines.

My roomate's daughter is alive because of cat scans, andtibiotics and surgery. My tenant's two daughters got chickenpox and both were hospitalized, on respirators and massive amounts of pain killers because the pox were in their throats.

For every horror story you can hurl onto the screen, there are hundreds who were cured or never got sick because of medical interventions, and even more who suffered needlessly because they listened to alarmists like you.

Answer 4

No, I'm certain most medicines prescribed are more helpful than harmful.  One of the main points we teach medical students is that all drugs have adverse effects and to weigh risks vs. benefits - but they learn how to do so.

My wife is from Canada.  They have socialized medicine, which means no one gets turned away.  It means health care is mostly free.  It's a wonderful system.   It doesn't mean you're forced to take medications.  I'm not sure where you get that idea.

The chicken pox vaccine is a miracle.  I had chicken pox; my kids didn't have to.  I'm susceptible, as a result, to getting shingles later in life or if I'm ever immunocompromised - they don't have to worry about it.  It does not cause cancer.  I'm not sure where you get that idea.

There are indeed risks and benefits to CT scans and the dyes used for contrast.  You had a bad reaction to a vaccine, you say, but we weigh the risks of tetanus vs. the extremely rare dangerous reaction.  Without the vaccine, more people would die of tetanus than people who have serious adverse effects from a vaccine.  I think of this every year when I get the flu vaccine - it can cause Guillain-Barre, and my father suffered with Guillain-Barre - but in the end, the flu is a lot more likely to kill me than Guillain-Barre.

It is true that a study several years ago contradicted previous studies about hormone replacement therapy during menopause, and that it can apparently cause some cancers.  But it can prevent others.  There are no drugs on the market that were not tested as required by law, and U.S. laws are so much more stringent than other Western countries that we often do without good drugs while they're already in use elsewhere.  I'm not sure where you got that information about drugs being on the market without being tested as required by law, but it's incorrect.  And of course, while I'm very sorry about your friend, there is no way to know whether her use of hormones was related to her cancer.

Answer 5

Yeah, I've had to stop taking things because of the side effects. Who hasn't?  But compared to the things I've been cured of (or not caught in the first place), side effects were pretty minor.

Answer 6

I can see you are part of that small percentage of people who gets the horrible side effects from prescribed medications. But, I have to say that in the past, people could die before they were 30 years old from a simple infection and now we have 80 and 90 year old people walking on our streets. When used properly, meds can be really helpful to get a healthier and better quality of life. I don't deny that meds can be harmful, but if I weight risks vs benefits, I think they are more harmful. And about things giving cancer, I know healthy people taking no meds, eating properly and having an incurable cancer. The media will tell you everything gives you cancer. Even Oreo cookies.

Answer 7

A socialized health care system will not force anyone to take any treatment.  In fact, such a system works best if patients ration their care to the fewest visits possible.

It is quite possible that the anecdotes you relate are coincidental - for example, HPV is more associated with cervical cancer than estrogen replacement therapy is.

Premarin is an old drug for menopause - that's why it was not tested for as long.  It's been in use for at least 50 years. In some women it increases the risk for breast cancer (especially if they smoke).  Most women feel the relief of menopausal symptoms and control of osteoporosis to be worth the extra risk.

Vaccines and other medicines usually help many more people than they hurt.  Trust me, we do not want to go back to the years when half the people died of some infection or infectious disease before they were 50.

DK